What I Never Thought I Wanted
by iceiceiceiceice
Summary: Sequel to 'Remembering and Forgetting' Meredith and Derek explore the challenges of balancing parenthood and a demanding career All the way from their son's birth to the end of residency
1. Author's Note

Okay, so I decided to split the story here. If you haven't read remembering and forgetting here's a short summary of what happened without spoiling too many details:

 **Summary**

\- Meredith was living a perfect intern life with lots of work and the frequent night at Joes with the occasional one night stand  
\- Meredith and Derek got married in Vegas after Derek had only been divorced from Addison for a few days  
\- Meredith woke up the next morning to an empty hotel room and could not remember anything  
\- She fled and ran back to Seattle  
\- At first she was afraid she got married to Mark, who had been hitting on her for weeks  
\- Six weeks later Derek took a job as head of neurosurgery  
\- The inevitable happened and they had to interact and Derek had to make Meredith fall in love with him  
\- Meredith was scared of falling for him and was hesitant to let him in  
\- Things get tricky when people from their past show up and they have to deal with them, but eventually they grow closer to each other: Derek moves in  
\- They find out Meredith is pregnant, there's a clinical trial, a merger and eventually Meredith gives birth to a beautiful baby son

* * *

This story picks up there. The first chapter is the last chapter of 'Remembering and forgetting' so feel free to skip it, if you read that story. If you haven't I strongly recommend you to read it first :P This story is going to explore their life as parents and Meredith's professional path and the challenge of balancing to demanding careers and children.

Lots of beloved characters are going to make an appearance.

I hope you are going to enjoy the sequel!


	2. what happened before

_Ellen: I hope the following chapters are going to shed some light on the Alex/Lexie/Izzie story. It's not the last time she is mentioned._

 _Claire: Glad you like it! Can assure you that there's going to be more._

 _Patsy: Thanks Patsy! Yes we are going to meet April, Reid and Percy now._

 _Susan: I can't spoil too much here, but I can say that there's going to be a storyline that deals with the aftermath of Ellis' departure from Boston_

 _anne0717: Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you like the story._

 _Anita: Thanks! I'm glad you like it._

 _Gina: Thanks! I really like happy MerDer too._

* * *

 **Chapter 68 House Of Love**

"What are you doing here? Today was your day off. Have you seen Karev, Mer? I was looking for him, he doesn't answer his pages." Derek wondered when he met Meredith at the lobby. "He is supposed to be on my service today and I can't find him."

"Well, he's taking care of some personal business and I'm covering for him, someone must have forgotten to change the plans." Meredith explained. "So, page me if you need something"

"Is this personal business someone by the name of Izzie Stevens?" Derek said with a little smile on his face.

Meredith looked surprised. "How do you know? Yes, Alex is flying down to Los Angeles today. Nobody knows except you and me, so don't tell anyone. He screwed up or he screwed Lexie or whatever. He wants to apologize. Hopefully he isn't planning some sappy big romantic gesture."

"Stevens would like that." Derek said and proceeded with the professional part "So as you are his substitute, I need you to take care of my patients' post ops. Do the tests and page me if something unusual comes up and I need you to wait for me here when you finish. I want to show you something."

* * *

"Remember when our biggest worry was whether our kid should wear a Red Sox or a Yankees jersey?" Meredith sighed after they left the ferry on their way to Derek's trailer.

"Yeah, back when we watched the ferry boats."

"Before our stupid fight. It doesn't get easier. The longer I'm pregnant the more I'm worried about the thousand ways I'm going to screw that child up. So why are we going up to the trailer?" Meredith wondered. The last few weeks Derek had been determined to keep her as close to the hospital as possible.

"I have to show you something. It's a surprise. You'll like it" he chuckled and looked at the road ahead of him.

"I don't like surprises." Meredith reminded her husband referring to her encounter with Nancy. "In particular surprises that wait for me at you trailer."

"Chances are you like this one." Derek chuckled. He was going to show her something very special today, their house, the house he had promised her to build for their family. "I can assure you that Nancy is far away this time. Hopefully at the other side of the country."

"Oh my god, you built a house, it's lovely and it's finished. When did this happen? You build us a house. You build us a house in the middle of the fricking winter." Meredith said in admiration when she caught the first glimpse. Her face lid up and so did Derek's face. He was relieved that she seemed to like the house.

"I built us a house, Meredith. It's yours. I want us to raise our family here."

"I love it. It's a beautiful place to raise a family and it looks just like the plans." Meredith said and started to ask a lot of questions "How did you manage this? Have you taken care of this all the time I thought you've been ignoring me? Why didn't you ever mention anything? When can we move in?"

"Well, calm down. I'm glad you like it." Derek interrupted her before she could ask more questions than he could remember to answer. "It's going to be 3 months or so until everything is finished. They still have to do a lot on the inside and yes, I've been up here a lot when we had our fight. It was pretty cold, but I built that deck myself. I wanted the reveal to be this grand gesture to win you back."

"Why didn't you?" Meredith looked at her husband.

"Because you are not the girl that can be won over by a grand gesture. It would have been the wrong sign. We needed to talk."

"True." Meredith nodded. "Is it safe to go inside yet? I want to see the inside. This feels so surreal and I need to sit down because I have this back pain."

"Yes. We can go inside and have a look around." Derek told her and pulled out a key from one of his pockets.

* * *

 _Would you like to know your future?  
If your answer is yes, think again. Uncertainty is the greatest life motivator. Anything can happen. So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence - a surprise. Live your life one day at a time. Who cares if it's going to be forever, if it's perfect today._

* * *

After they had looked at almost every room in the house Meredith started to feel water running down her thighs. "Ahhh! We really have to get back to the hospital now. We have to hurry."

Derek hadn't noticed it yet and looked at her confused "We are off tonight. No surgeries for you."

"No I'm not interested in surgeries right now, idiot" Meredith said impatiently and pointed to her legs "I think my water broke. That's why we have to go"

"It's too early" Derek pointed out "We have to go"

"Calm down" Derek told his wife as he put a cold wet cloth on her forehead to provide a bit of comfort in between the contractions. She was still not fully dilated, but the pain was getting worse and the ice chips were almost gone.

"No, I'm here in the middle of the fucking night, three weeks before my due date and instead of my extremely capable OB/Gyn I'm stuck here with an intern because my OB/GYn is in labor too." Meredith screamed "I'm not going to calm down. Get Cristina and Lexie now!"

* * *

 _"Mark, there's a woman in my bed, she's perfect and I'm going to spend the rest of my life with her. She wants strawberry ice cream for breakfast."  
"What are you talking about Derek?"  
"I got married last night, and she's perfect. She's the one!"  
"You are telling me that you got married last night? Are you serious? We went here to celebrate your newly found freedom, our freedom and you get married after one drunken night in Vegas? She's not the one, you were drunk."  
"I wasn't drunk"  
"That makes it worse. Threw your life away for the second time. So who is she? It's a she, right?"  
"Of course, she's amazing, hold on, I'm about to enter the room now, you can talk to her herself. You are going to like her."  
"Shep? Are you still there? Are you okay?"_

 _"She's gone. I looked everywhere. She just left."  
"What do you mean?"  
"Her stuff is gone, her purse, her clothes and she."  
"Is there a note somewhere? Maybe she went out to get a pack of cigarettes. Your stuff is still there, is it? She didn't rob you?"  
"If it was I would have found it and no, my stuff is still here. I have to hang up and look for her. I bought ice cream for her."_

* * *

"Oh boy, if I had known it would be like that, I'd have gone on a conference for the week."

"Has she threatened to kill you yet?" Mark wondered.

"No" Derek laughed and looked at Mark, who put his hand on his shoulders and suggested "Well, wait until she does and we can talk again."

"Addison has threatened to kill you?" Derek asked surprised.

"Three times actually." Mark said.

"Meredith kicked me out because 'it's all my fucking fault. I should have waited until after our boy is here." Derek laughed.

"Boy?" Mark looked at him "Thought she didn't want to know"

"It was my little Christmas present. She told me at Christmas. I'm surprised Addison hasn't told you. Thought you guys had booked the chapel for 2025 by now."

As Derek walked down the hall to get more ice chips for Meredith he ran into someone "Nance, what are you doing here?"

His sister smiled "Nice to see you too. Addison called me. Mom, Liz, Kathleen and I decided to come over. They are at the hotel. Addison said that she and the slutty intern might need an OB/Gyn, so I came to the hospital straight away."

Derek got angry. Nobody was allowed to call her slutty. "Meredith is not slutty and given your history I'm not sure she'd like you to see her private parts"

"private parts? Seriously Derek. How old are you? 12?" Nancy wondered and looked at her younger brother who was just as nervous as any father was before witnessing the birth of his first born.

"You better check on Addison first. It's going to be a while anyway because she's not close to being fully dilated yet and I'm not sure whether she wants to see you. Your last encounter was a little…"

"… awkward. I understand." Nancy laughed and went to see Addison.

* * *

"Mer, I have a surprise and I'm not sure you are going to like it." Derek told Meredith in a voice that sounded like a little boy who was about to confess his latest misdeed to his mother.

Meredith eyed him suspiciously. "Derek, just spit it out. I'm in so much pain from all the contractions, whatever you have to tell me I'm sure it won't be nearly as bad as the pain."

"Addison called my family and they are in Seattle right now. Nancy is in the next room delivering Addison's baby." Derek explained without any hesitation. He expected Meredith to start to yell at him, but her reaction was another one.

"That's great, Addison can deliver my baby when she's finished." She said enthusiastically.

Her friends who sat beside her giggled "Mer, I'm pretty sure she's going to be exhausted and won't be able to do that." George told her.

"Well Nancy is not going to be anywhere near my vagina" Meredith insisted. "and so is neither one of you"

"Alright I'm going to page Dr. Kelly" George nodded and went to get another OB/Gyn attending.

* * *

Two hours later Dr. Kelly was able to give everyone the happy news "Congratulations everyone! It's a beautiful healthy little adorable…" he told Derek's waiting family and Meredith's friends, but was interrupted by Cristina "Spit it out already"

He laughed and continued "It's a boy, Dr. Yang, it's a boy. 6 pounds and 19.50 inches and a healthy set of lungs."

They all walked into the room and looked at Meredith cradled him in her arm "Hello little guy, good morning."

"He looks like you." Lexie noted.

Cristina rolled her eyes and added "He looks like a baby. A baby that has just been squeezed out of his mother's vagina."

* * *

Derek looked at his wife and his beautiful son who slept in her arms. "Isn't he lovely?" he smiled and looked at Meredith.

Meredith used her index finger to touch the babies hand "Hello, Christopher Mark Shepherd."

Derek looked at her in shock. They had never talked about names. He had always assumed that she had picked one, but was surprised to find out it was this. "We can't name him after Mark, he'd rub that under my nose till the end of time."

Meredith giggled and reminded him of one very important fact. "We wouldn't have met if it wasn't for Mark."

Derek smiled and kissed her "I love you. "

"and I love you." she whispered. "and we are going to be happy. Promise?"

"We are going to be happy. No matter what happens. I have you and you have me and we have Christopher. We are going to love each other"

"even if we hate each other." Meredith giggled.

"No running ever" Derek added.

"and we are going to take care of each other when we are old, senile and smelly." Meredith added.

"It's forever."


	3. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

When Derek looked through the nursery's window at his newborn son, he couldn't help himself but smile. It was the first peaceful minute since they had found out that his sisters were in the hospital and he was surprised when he looked up and saw his best friend Mark looking at his own newborn daughter. "I heard it's a boy. When was he born?"

"7.23" Derek answered remembering the gruelsome fourteen hours of labor his wife had been through.

"7.21" Mark smirked.

With them everything had been a competition. Ever since the day they had met on the school yard. "You always have to be the first." Derek smiled and looked at his son who was sleeping in his little bed next to Maria.

"Such an honor that you named your son after me." Mark smirked.

"I didn't, Mer did." Derek stated calmly. He wouldn't have picked Mark, but he was fine with it.

"I see, she must be the voice of reason in your marriage." Mark continued to tease him "I always knew she had a thing for me."

* * *

Meredith looked around her. She was tired and wanted to sleep, but there was no way she could kick out George and Cristina out of her room. "How's Karev missing this?"

"Evil Spawn is in L.A. to romance Izzie into coming back to Seattle." Cristina said dryly.

"How do you know?" Meredith wondered.

"I know everything and I'm covering your ass and his right now" Cristina rolled her eyes and laughed. "you never showed up for the shift you promised him to cover."

Meredith laughed "Yeah, I decided to enjoy myself pushing a baby out of my vagina instead. So much fun, especially if it's too late for an epidural because labor started in the middle of the freaking woods."

"Did you crap on the table?" Cristina blared out and all heads turned to look at her.

"Urgh" muttered disgusted.

"No Cristina, I did not crap on the table." Meredith said offended.

"Most people do." Cristina said unimpressed by George's and Meredith's disgust.

"For real?"

"Yeah. For real George. "

* * *

" Oh my god, is that them?" A black haired woman wondered when she walked up to the hospital nursery.

"Kathleen nice to see you, meet Maria Elisabeth Montgomery Sloan and that fella over there is Mark Shepherd." Mark said proudly pointing at the two newborns.

"Christopher Mark Shepherd." Derek corrected him "Mark is his middle name. Because if I tell people that Mark peed on me they'd be pretty confused otherwise. I don't want to bring up that … "

"don't I was drunk." Mark interrupted him.

"Oh, I see the slutty intern has named the child after the daddy." Said a snarky black haired woman that walked up to the group of three.

"Why are you so bitchy, Nance? I haven't slept with Derek's wife." Mark wondered.

"I beg to differ" Kathleen said looking at Nancy.

"What is this supposed to mean?" Derek wondered while his sisters and Mark exchanged angry looks.

"That Mark hasn't told you about everything that happened in New York." Nancy said looking at her brother.

"Mark, don't tell me… " Derek tried to say.

"She's right. Sorry" Mark said and looked down at the floor.

"I want to punch you right now." Derek threatened Mark.

"You better find out if he hasn't been in the sheets with the slutty intern, too." Nancy suggested, but Lizzie interrupted her "That's inappropriate Nancy. So inappropriate. They named their son after dad."

"Who knows if it's really his son?" Nancy insisted.

"Seriously? Mom said she is lovely." Kathleen reminded her.

"Mom would like anybody her golden boy is infatuated with." Lizzie said with a smile on her face. "But Derek deserves to know the whole story. I mean we do after Nancy offered to graciously share it with us on Christmas"

* * *

"They are adorable. I'm so proud of you. Where are the moms?" Carolyn wondered. "Can I go in and say hello to Meredith?"

"Yeah, just go ahead. She's in room 305." Derek told her.

"Addison is sleeping. She has been in labor all night and is pretty exhausted." Mark said.

"Well, they deserve all the sleep they can get." Carolyn told Mark with a huge smile on her face.

The arrival of her mother tuned Nancy down and she came up with a slightly more friendly response to her nephew's birth "Congratulations! Your wife could have waited until after the baby shower though! Her friend told us to be all secretive about our visit and she goes into labor two week before term."

Kathleen started to laugh "The OB who asks a pregnant woman to control her labor. Do you tell that to your patient's who go into labor at 3 in the morning too? Don't be a bitch. She can still have a baby shower"

Derek looked confused as he had no clue what his sisters were talking about. "There is no baby shower. Meredith didn't want one."

"We booked the flights two months ago, Mer's friend had planned a surprise shower this weekend because they knew she wouldn't agree on having one otherwise." Lizzie started to explain "She invited us and we wouldn't miss this for anything in the world, but we can't get a hold of her now. I really look forward to meeting your wife. Her friend seemed to be incredibly fond of her."

Listening to his sister's explanation there was only one reasonable explanation "That sounds like Izzie. Anyway, I'm going to check if Meredith is ready to have visitors."

* * *

"Meredith, there are some visitors here… well, a lot in fact." Derek told Meredith after kissing her temple.

"Let them come in. Or at least some, not all at the same time I guess because the room would be packed." Meredith laughed, never in her wildest dreams had she expected that Derek's sisters would fly across the country to meet their new nephew.

As one of Derek's sisters entered the room Cristina decided to leave "This is like the shepherd take over. I have to go."

Meredith grabbed her arm and begged "Don't leave me alone to be fed to the wolves."

But Cristina insisted on leaving and joked "I'm not missing surgeries for you, slacker."

"I'm going to leave too." George agreed and Lexie followed suit.

"They are your family too, Lexie." Meredith shouted when Lexie approached the door, but looking at faces of Derek's sisters she soon realized that meeting them would be a lot more pleasant than her last encounter with Nancy.

"Hey, you must be the woman who stole my brother's heart. Nice to meet you. I'm Liz. Derek probably hasn't told you anything about me because he tends to forget that I exist because I'm not nearly as accomplished as he is… " One of the four ladies introduced herself to her.

"Wow, you talk a lot and fast." Meredith laughed when Lizzie finally took a break from talking.

"With four siblings in the house you have to adapt to be heard. Christopher looks beautiful. I like that you named him after our dad." She laughed.

"It seemed like the right choice." Meredith nodded "You are really nice…"

" … compared to Nancy?" Lizzie interrupted her and laughed "Yeah, she can be a little bit snarky at times and judgmental – and she doesn't have a filter – and from all I heard you were off to a bad start."

Meredith giggled "Yeah, that's one way to call that"

Derek smiled "See, they are not so bad."

There was a knock on the door. A head popped in and Meredith was able to see yet another person with Derek's hair. "Can I come in? I don't want to intrude." The woman wondered.

"Sure, Kat" Derek said.

"It's nice to see you and it's such a wonderful occasion" She came in and hugged her brother and turned to great Meredith immediately after that. "I'm Kathleen, one of Derek's sisters, but I guess you already know that, mom told me so much about you, she's so happy that her golden child finally procreated. She's beyond ecstatic and I'm sure you are."

"I am." Meredith nodded and smiled. "Nice to meet you. I'd introduce myself, but I guess it's not necessary because you already know me. I'm surprised you are here though."

"Mark called us yesterday evening." Lizzie lied.

Kathleen smiled and tried to divert Meredith's attention to something else "You shouldn't have hid her for so long, brother."

"Well, Nancy left quite the impression on her and mom knowing she's pregnant before she knew didn't help too much either." Derek smirked.

"Classic mom." Lizzie nodded.

The door opened again and Meredith took a deep breath. It was Nancy, but to her surprise she was rather friendly, but shaking her hand still felt awkward "Hey, I come in peace. Hello. I'm Nancy. We didn't get a proper introduction last time, so hey."

* * *

Unaware that Meredith's room was filled with Derek's family, Lexie came in with four stacked boxed of cupcakes her dad had made. "Meredith, I had a hard time finding the banana cupcake dad made for you, he said you love them when you were a child. You ate so many at your 4th birthday that you were jumping around the garden with a girl called Stacy all day. But I think it's…" She stopped talking when she looked around "Oh, hey, you have visitors, a lot of visitors in fact. Hello."

"Judging from the way you are rambling and are easily put off guard I assume you are…" Nancy said observantly.

"I'm Lexie" Lexie stammered "Meredith's sister. Well, half sister actually and you must be one of Derek's sisters. I mean you have his hair and his eyes."

"I am." Nancy nodded dismissive.

"That's Nancy. Excuse her." Lizzie said in a more friendly tone "It's a pleasure to meet you Lexie, my name is Liz."

"And I'm Kathleen. Are you here to see Christopher? "

"Oh, no, I've already seen him. I was here because my dad thought it was nice if I bring the cupcakes he made or his girlfriend made or whatever" Lexie explained.

"Why is he not here?" Nancy interrogated Lexie.

Lexie looked at Meredith insecurely and tried to find the right words , but was saved by Carolyn Shepherd "You don't have to answer this sweetie. It's none of Nancy's business. Excuse my daughter. Nancy, why don't you see how Addison is doing?"

"Lexie, why we don't take the cupcakes outside" Derek suggested. "I'm sure this isn't the best moment for Meredith to eat huge amounts of sugar."

"You are a health nut, Derek." Meredith said annoyed.

"Has been ever since…" Nancy rolled her eyes at her brother's suggestion "and she needs all the calories she can get right now. You might not realize it, brother, but it's kind of exhausting to push a baby out of your vagina."

* * *

"What was that about?" Lexie wondered when she arrived with 4 packs of cupcakes in the conference room Derek had sent her to.

"Izzie had started to plan a surprise shower for Mer before she left." George said "It was meant to be today, that's why all the Shepherds are here and that's why your dad gave you all the cupcakes."

"Yeah, she was trying, be happy and now, people, move your asses we have a conference room to decorate." Cristina suggested

"The shower is in the hospital?" Lexie wondered.

"Well now it is." Cristina concluded "Izzie gave me the box with all the crappy decorations before she left and now we have a lot of 'horray' banners in both pink and blue because Izzie didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl."

"We could use both and include Dr. Montgomery. I mean …" Lexie suggested, but was interrupted by Liz, who also entered the room. "Can I help you with anything? I have 5 kids of my own, I know how to decorate."

"Wow, you Shepherds really have a way of being all over the place. But fine, the more the merrier or whatever." Cristina said and left the room immediately.

* * *

After George had been paged to the ER, it was only Lexie, Kathleen and Lizzie in the room. They were almost finished decoration when Kathleen looked at Lexie and started to laugh. "This is weird, my brother and his ex-wife are having a baby a year after their divorce and I'm here with my husband's sister in law decorating a hospital conference room."

Lexie smiled. Thinking about everything that had happened since Meredith came into her life, it really was weird" The sister I never knew I had has a baby with the husband she met in Vegas and married with no knowledge that he was going to be her boss had a child at the same place and time her husband's best friend has a child with his ex wife. Beat that!"

"It's pretty crazy."Lizzie agreed. "So you are going to be a surgeon too? Ellis Grey must be proud."

"I'm Lexie, Alexandra Grey. But everyone calls me Lexie." The resident introduced herself "Nice to meet you and yeah, I'm going to be a surgeon, but Meredith's mom is not my mom."

"I'm Lizzie. Nice to meet you. This Asian girl is pretty intense."

"Yes, Dr. Yang is pretty intense." Lexie agreed. "Let me help you with that."

"Are you finished?" George wondered when we walked into the room with two packs of lemonade and water.

"George, what does this look like?" Lexie asked "Yes we are finished. You can tell everyone to meet us here at 11.50 and we are going to wheel in Meredith and Dr. Montgomery at 12.00 for a little surprise lunch."

* * *

"Tell me one reason why I shouldn't punch you right now" Derek told Mark when they ran into each other on their way to their partners.

"Your wife named your son after me and it was a one time thing." Mark tried to explain, but expected Derek to punch him when he didn't he continued to explain. "I left immediately afterwards because I knew it wasn't right and you guys were already separated... you had already filed for divorce."

Derek nodded. "Why didn't you tell me?

"Because it's messed up. I had feelings for her since med school and I go for it the first chance I get." Mark tried to explain "I went to Seattle straight away because I couldn't look at you. While I was here I told myself that things would get better. I had to get away from New York as far as possible."

"I thought we could tell each other everything" Derek said and both of them remained quiet for a while. "You always loved her, I just didn't want to see it."

"I have to go and check on Addison. The baby shower thing, you know." Mark sighed. "I should have told you 13 years ago."

* * *

"Where are you taking me?" Meredith asked after George had came in with a wheelchair and had demanded to sit down.

"Um, some postnatal CT" George tried to cover, but he knew Meredith would see through that. "I'm not stupid, there's no such thing as a postnatal CT."

"Well there is now." Derek told her when he took over the wheelchair at the elevator.

"This isn't even the right floor for a CT." Meredith said. "I might have given birth, but I'm not stupid."

"Well it's a surprise" George said.

"I don't like surprises."

"Well you liked the one yesterday." Derek smirked.

"Which makes it even more likely that I'm not going to like this one, unless … " Meredith ranted until she saw Addison. Addison looked just as clueless about what was going on as she was "Hold on, Addison, do you have a clue what's going on here?"

"No, but I assume my stupid boyfriend and your stupid husband know something, given the sheepish smiles on their faces." Addison told her giving Mark and Derek an unfriendly look.

"Guess we'll find out soon enough." Meredith smiled when the elevator doors opened.

* * *

"Are you shipping in for a gift for Meredith?" Jackson asked at lunch when he met up with all his other Mercy West residents.

"Meredith? Ellis Grey's daughter who is married to a renowed neurosurgeon?" Reid wondered "Don't see why we should spend money on her."

"No judgment on the family thing please and I've known her for ages." Jack reminded her.

"I think he's fantastic and their baby is probably gorgeous. I can buy something" April suggested enthusiastically.

"I'm in, maybe he'll give us some surgeries. We should buy something for Dr. Montgomery's child too." Percy said.

"Well I don't know either one of them, so don't count on me." Reid dismissed it and left the table "I don't think she would appreciate it and I'm not here to make friends. I wouldn't and I have to get back to my patients now."

"I can take care of the present. Just give me some money and I'll buy something for the little bundle of joy." April said and collected 30 Dollars from Jackson and Percy.

"Just don't go overboard. Meredith was raised by a surgeon, she doesn't like overly emotional stuff." Jackson reminded her.

"I wanted to buy a 'I have daddy's hair' shirt." April said "His hair is so perfect"

"For both of them, you realize…" Percy tried to remember her.

"No, for Christopher obviously." April defended herself "Can you cover for me? I'll be back in an hour."

* * *

"Surprise!" A room full of surgeons, Derek's family, residents and nurses shouted all at once.

"You can't be serious!" Meredith said looking at Lexie, Derek and George.

"How did you get Webber to sign off on this?" Addison wondered looking at Mark.

"Well, if the head of neuro and the head of plastics need a conference room to celebrate the birth of the head of neonatal surgeries' daughter and the birth of Ellis Grey grandson, everything is possible." Derek told his surprised ex wife.

"Oh, the nurses seem to love Grey more than you, she got way more presents than you did. " Mark smiled and teased Addison.

"Or Derek didn't disappoint half the nursing staff by sleeping with them and moving on to the Meryl Streep of fetal surgery. " Meredith reminded Mark with a smile on her face.

"Meryl Streep?" Addison wondered "I'm not that old."

"Funny Grey." Was all Mark could say.

* * *

"Don't you want to open your presents?" Lexie wondered after everyone had grabbed a cupcake.

"Do I have to?"

"Just open the presents now. It's a shower" Derek said and kissed her on the cheek.

"Fine as long as there are no craft activities afterwards" Meredith and Addison rolled their eyes and said at the same time.

"Wow, I…" Nancy said surprised and Mark added. "… that's scary.. " Callie starred at them and handed over her present. "Like twins and Shepherd slept with both of them, here. I only bought it this morning because Izzie never mentioned anything and this morning Lexie did. Anyway, have fun."

"A blue romper. That's lovely." Addison said with a surprised look on her face. "A pink one." Meredith said equally surprised.

"Hm, well I guess I mixed up the…" Callie stammered.

"It's fine. Thank you. We'll just switch."

"And the next one. This is for you Addison, this is for you Meredith." Lizzie said "We bought it a while back when we didn't know whether it's a boy or a girl, but I guess you can use it either way."

"A Clay set to make a baby's hand and foot model. What do we think we are?" Mark wondered "We are surgeons not orthopedist."

"I'll remember this conversation when we are in the OR together the next time." Callie reminded him.

"It's very cute." Addison said with a graceful smile on her face.

"Yes, thank you." Meredith nodded before Nancy handed over the next present. "We got you a baby sleep monitor. It's a mat that monitors the baby's breathing and heart rate. I used them too when we had Samuel and Joshua. I can highly recommend it."

"I guess you want me to have a heart attack when this thing goes off with a false alarm." Mark joked.

"Better safe than sorry, Mark." Nancy said passive aggressively.

"How are we going to transport all of this back to the house?" Derek wondered looking at the table full of all sorts of baby items.

"Your Porsche should be big enough or we can help you and look at the place where you want to raise Christopher." Kathleen said.

"Guess you didn't tell them either. We are going to move into the house Derek built us in a few months, so living at my mother's house is just temporary." Meredith smiled.

"You plan to move to the middle of nowhere?" Lizzie asked puzzled.

"It's nice and quiet." Carolyn said.

"And remote. Very very remote." Nancy added.

"I'd love to see it before we leave." Carolyn told her son and daughter in law "But you two better get back to your rooms now and rest. You need all the rest you can get."


	4. Chapter 2

_Patsy/Julie/Susan/Shelley/Caroline:_ Thank you for your reviews! Gina: There will be lots of interaction with the Mercy Westers  
 _Jill:_ No dreamhouse in a while. Meredith will be busy with work and parenthood until Derek furnished it.  
 _Carolyn:_ There's going to be more on Alex &Izzie in a few chapters.  
 _Melanie/Kim:_ Meredith got off to a bad start with Derek's family when Nancy showed up, I just felt it was important that they try to make an effort to get to know Meredith  
 _Ellen:_ We are going to see more of Reid, that's for sure and Izzie will make an appearance too, just wait a few chapters until Alex is back from L.A.  
Bextra1256: Meredith started her internship in 2006ish according to Grey's timeline which this story moves along... so the kids would be 18 in 2025 and not 10... but it was intended as a joke anyway, so don't worry

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

"Hey Mer, he looks just like you." Alex said when he brought in Meredith's son into her room after picking him up in the nursery.

"I think he looks like Derek. He's perfect." Meredith smiled as she kissed Christopher and looked at Alex. "So how was L.A.?

"I talked to Izzie and she said she needs time." He sighed "I don't know what it means, but we talked a lot. Maybe this can work out. Or whatever."

"I really hope you get another chance with her."

"So when are you getting out of here?" Alex wondered "I mean you have been in here for almost a week."

"Today, I have to go in for a follow up because of the perineal laceration, but I can sleep in my own bed." Meredith smiled. "Derek is saying good bye to his family at the airport and he'll pick me up once they left and we'll drive home and show Christopher the place where he gets to spend the next few months."

"I'm glad you are happy, Mer." Alex said.

"Thank you Alex. I hope you'll be too."

* * *

When Derek came back from the airport after dropping off his sisters and his mother he was as happy as ever. The birth of Christopher has been an elevating experience. "My two favorite people in the world are going home with me." He smiled and picked up Meredith's bag "My mother insisted on cleaning the house before she left, so don't be surprised if you can see your face on the floor when you come in."

"I'm surprised she managed to catch her flight then. It was very dusty." Meredith laughed. She knew how messy the house got after a few days with so many people living in it.

"She has 40 years of experience, Mer." Derek reminded her.

"I really liked Kathleen and Lizzie by the way. They are …"

"not like Nancy?" Derek interrupted her.

Meredith smiled and laughed "Yeah."

"Well Nancy doesn't filter between what she is thinking and what she is saying. She's a lot like Amy in that way. Ready to go?" Derek wondered.

"As ready as I'm ever going to be." Meredith smiled and picked up Christopher.

* * *

The house looked just the same as every day, but for the first time in almost thirty years there'd be a baby in it. "Here we are Christopher. This is where you are going to live the next few months until your daddy finished our new house. Here's the living room and down the hall is the kitchen and the utility room and your nursery is right here. It's red like blood because your mommy likes that color and your grandma had all her brilliant ideas in the little room and you will be a lot more brilliant than she ever was because your daddy is a smarty and your mommy isn't stupid either and your aunt Cristina will make sure your first word is going to be surgery or scalpel."Meredith told Christopher when she brought him into the nursery.

"I'm smart. Uhm?" Derek smirked.

"Most of the time. Sometimes you are a brainless brain surgeon, but most of the time you are quite brilliant. " Meredith teased him and started to unpack Christopher's bag.

"You look very happy." Derek noted.

"I am very happy Derek. I have you and we have our son and we are happy. Just look at him, how could anyone ever be sad looking at something so perfect. We made him."

"We did. But let's get him to bed. He looks sleepy."

"Well, he's sleeping for 16 hours a day. I guess getting pushed out the birth canal is just as exhausting as doing the pushing." She laughed and sighed. The laceration was still quite painful when she sat somewhere.

"You can sleep for a while if you want to, I can take care of him." Derek suggested.

"Or we can take him upstairs with us and rest ourselves together. I'm sure meeting your sisters hasn't been easy either."

"They are a handful." Derek nodded. He really did not miss living with his sisters and his mother and was quite thankful that Alex Karev was one of his roommates for now, but he knew that Meredith was right. He was just as tired as she was and they put down Christopher in the middle of their bed between them.

* * *

After having fallen asleep in the bedroom Meredith and Derek were woken up by a screaming baby. "Baby's crying." Derek noted when he woke up.

"Yeah, the baby's crying. I'm going to get him, I guess he needs his meal." Meredith said and got up to prepare him for breastfeeding.

"Guess you better take care of that, I would, but I lack the essential parts." Derek joked and got up to get Meredith her nursing pillow from the nursery.

"You do." Meredith smiled but looking at Christopher she added "But your son likes those parts a lot."

"Much like his daddy." Derek smirked

"It's very weird. There's this tingling sensation before the milk ejects. And all the oxytocin." Meredith bit her lip while she was nurturing Christopher.

"I like oxytocin." Derek smirked knowing what effect the hormone had on the human body.

"I know you do. But this is inappropriate, there's a baby in our bed." Meredith teased him.

"You could put him back into the cot when you are finished and we could cuddle." Derek suggested.

"We could - cuddle." Meredith said firmly. Due to the laceration the OB had told her to take things slowly.

* * *

The next day Meredith and Derek decided to take Christopher out for a walk in the neighborhood. It was a sunny spring day and surprisingly warm for the season. "He looks like Amy." Derek said when he put Christopher into his pram.

"Drug addict resident sister Amy? The only Shepherd sister I haven't met and who hasn't called or sent a card?" Meredith wondered while she put on her coat. "Lizzie and Kathleen didn't seem to fond of her"

"She's not an addict anymore, she hasn't used in 10 years." Derek defended his sister "She's been working very hard on that."

"Where was she anyway? I mean your other sisters ambushed us here." Meredith wondered.

"She's a resident and she's not particularly close to either one of them. Ever since, well, she was never close to them. They always judged her for what happened." Derek told his wife.

"And you didn't?"

"I did."

"He looks so peaceful. Makes you forget about all the bad things in the world, all the things you want to protect him from." Meredith said when she looked at her sleeping infant son.

"That's how I felt about Amy. I wanted to protect her from everything bad after dad died. I never wanted her to feel any pain ever again. But she was never the same after dad got shot. She has seen too much you didn't want her to see. Ever." Derek sighed.

"You are very protective of her." Meredith nodded.

"And I'll be very protective of Christopher."

"Look at him, never in a million years I would have thought that I could ever feel for a person the way I feel for him. I would die to make sure he's okay. If it's ever my life or his, take mine. I want him to be okay." Meredith said with a smile on her face. It usually took her very long to connect to people, but this young man had taken her heart in storm.

"He'll be fine. We are going to be fine."

"He's perfect. Even though I'm tired all the time, he's perfect." Meredith smiled as they walked along the street she had grown up in during what felt a lifetime ago.

* * *

The next two weeks passed by quickly and they slowly settled into a nice routine. Changing diapers wasn't something new anymore and doing the laundry daily was something Meredith got slowly used to. She hadn't spent as much time away from people since the second summer of college when she worked in the lab for one of her mother's clinical studies, but she was slowly getting more and more surgery deprived.

"Meredith, I'm sorry, I was paged. I have to go." Derek put down his cup of coffee and kissed her and Christopher.

"I can come with you." Meredith begged.

"It's been two weeks since Christopher was born. You're not supposed to be back. Take care of yourself and of him and I'll be back before you know it." Derek insisted.

"Listen Christopher, your daddy is leaving us here." Meredith said cradling the baby "All on our own while he and your aunties and uncles are busy saving lives at the hospital he forces me to stay here even though I could observe him from the gallery and parade you around the hospital and show you two everyone because you are a very beautiful baby."

"Don't guilt talk me, I'd love to stay, but my patients need me." Derek smiled "And you need to stay here and take care of our kid.

While Meredith took care of her baby the lives of her friends went on. The impact of the merger was still noticeable.

* * *

"Callie is bisexual. My ex wife is bisexual. And she discovered that she's into girls after we divorced." George said sipping his paper cup coffee.

"Looking at you I'd say she was into girls when she got married." Cristina joked.

"Dude, get over it." Alex insisted. He was tired of hearing George's moaning over and over again.

"Someone could have told me, she could have told me. I mean it's something new. I asked you how things went and if there was anything new, you could have told me that Callie was sleeping with a woman." George said.

"Relax, I think it's hot." Alex tried to calm him down "Girl on girl sex. I would give anything for some sort of sensation. I haven't had sex since Izzie left and I haven't been in an OR in 4 days because Percy and Reid keep stealing all my surgeries."

"Wimp." Cristina insulted Alex.

"How is Meredith?" George wondered.

"She's good, hanging out with the kid a lot at the minute, but I think she's good. Meredith always makes me think screwed up people have a chance." Alex sighed.

"She's missing out on a lot of surgeries though." Cristina pointed out.

"Do you think she cares?" Alex wondered. He knew that Meredith had other priorities.

"She should." Cristina insisted.

"I think she's happy right now." George said "I mean the joy you feel when you hold a baby and look into his eyes and see this vulnerable little thing that you made and that depends entirely on you."

Cristina rolled her eyes "You really are a girl. I have to get back to the OR. Scrubbing in on a valve replacement and I'm sure I'm going to perform the solo first solo surgery."

* * *

"Hey you two, how's my nephew?" Lexie wondered when she peaked through Meredith's bedroom door.

Meredith looked up from her journal and smiles "Pretty good. He's perfect. Sleeps, eats and sleeps. Right now he's sound asleep"

"He's so adorable. He looks so peaceful" Lexie said leaning over his crib.

"How are things at the hospital?" Meredith wondered. She was dying to hear any medical stories, but got a little jealous when her younger sister started talking.

"Brilliant, I got to scrub in on a traumatic hemispherectomy. Well Kepner was there too, but she's a total suck up." Lexie said and her eyes lit up.

"A hemispherectomy? You can't be serious? I should have been there. I hate maternity leave." Meredith pouted and got up and stood next to Lexie at Christopher's crib."But I could never abandon you, baby. I would take you to the OR and carry you on my back and nobody would mind because they'd look at you and see how cute you are and mommy would get to cut again."

"So you are not going crazy?" Lexie wondered.

"It feels like I am, I mean Derek got paged to the hospital for that traumatic hemispherectomy and I was here, in my bed, with my baby. I only got up when I had to change his diaper and when I got hungry. It just feels so fluffy even though I'm still quite exhausted and sore." Meredith admitted.

"Do you want me to sit for a while to have an adult conversation? Or we could take him to the park, it's a lovely day." Lexie suggested even though she was pretty tired after the night shift.

"Derek won't be back in a while, so I guess we could." Meredith agreed to taking Christopher to the park.

* * *

Meredith and Lexie tried desperately to put Christopher's car seat into the car. Whatever they did, it didn't seem right. "What are you two trying to do?" Derek asked with an amused smile on his face after silently observing Meredith's and Lexie's attempt for 10 minutes.

"Well, we wanted to take Christopher to the park" Meredith said.

"What stopped you?" Derek smirked.

"The car seat." Lexie admitted embarrassed.

"You'd think that two people with medical doctorates would manage to put a baby into a car seat, but I guess it's not so easy." Meredith added.

"I could help you, but it looks like it's going to rain any minute." Derek told them. As he carried Christopher back into the house he added "And the next time you try to put him into the car seat, you might want to remember that we bought a rear facing car seat as advised by the American Academy of Pediatrics."

"We knew that" Lexie lied.

"Sure you did." Derek smirked "Let's get all of you inside. I'm going to prepare dinner for most of us. You need a lot of nutrients and I'm not sure grilled cheese is going to provide those."

* * *

Meredith was alone again after everyone had left for work the next morning when she suddenly heard a voice familiar to her. "Oh my god, is this, yes it is, Mer, he's adorable."

Meredith turned around and saw someone she had not expected to see as Alex had refused to talk about their relationship. "Izzie? What are you doing here? Are you back for good?" Meredith wondered looking at her friend and quickly getting up to hug her.

"Well, I'm back to try to work on Alex and me, Addison talked to the UCLA and I get to complete my OB and prenatal rotation here, that's three months and we have three months to work on our relationship, see if we can work it out." Izzie admitted "Lexie was just a fling and I think I really love him."

"That's great. You are back. Alex is going to be delighted, he's been a mess this past two weeks because well, he was waiting for a decision." Meredith admitted truthfully.

"Well, I'm going to tell him. Is he at the hospital?" Izzie wondered.

"Yes, he is and Izzie, he didn't mean to hurt you. He can be an ass, but he's a good guy."

"I know that" Izzie shrugged.

"We really missed you, Izzie. All of us."


	5. Chapter 3

_Work is keeping me busy, so sorry that you only get an update now. Thank you for your reviews I really appreciate all of them..._

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

"How is Meredith doing?" Jackson wondered.

"She and Shepherd are all over this baby. I think she's fine." Alex told him after taking a sip from his first beer in a week. Two weeks had passed since Meredith had taken baby Christopher home and her friends already started to miss her, but this night they had another topic to discuss. Cristina Yang had been chosen to perform the first solo surgery anyone of them had ever been allowed to do and the other residents were not happy with the choice the trauma attending had made.

"How's Stevens? She's a hottie. You can be glad she came back" Jackson smirked while observing how April Kepner and Reed Adamson sat at a table at the opposite side of the room with Izzie.

"Stay away from her. We only managed to go back to talking to each other like civilized human beings and we are getting to second base." Alex shrugged.

"Izzie and I talk." George said.

"I haven't had sex in six weeks. Izzie wants to build our relationship on something else." Alex sighed.

"I haven't had sex since the divorce." George admitted and they both looked at Jackson.

"I have sex. But I still wanted to perform that surgery and Hunt wouldn't be into me." Jackson told his friends with a self-congratulatory smile.

"Sucks to be a man these days." Alex stated and wondered "How's Yang getting this surgery?"

"I would have deserved this" Jackson said. "It's the first splenectomy she's doing, it'd be like the tenth I was in."

"No, I would have deserved this." George challenged him.

"All of us would have deserved this surgery" Jackson summarized the situation "Especially considering the fact that we all clocked more hours in general than she did."

"How's it fair that her boyfriend decides over who gets to perform the first solo surgery?" George wondered referring to Hunt.

Jackson turned his head "Yang and Hunt?"

"Yeah, Yang and Hunt. Don't tell me you didn't notice!" Alex looked at him surprised "What are you doing all day?"

"Taking care of my patients." Jackson suggested

* * *

Meanwhile Meredith was sitting on the bed folding the newly washed and dried baby clothes. "It's so unfair. You get to operate on an inoperable tumor, Cristina got picked for the first solo surgery, Izzie is doing one C-section after the other and I haven't seen the inside of an OR in more than a months and Izzie and Alex are having sex all this time and every time you and I try to have sex our baby starts screaming." Meredith complained to Derek when he walked in.

He kissed her cheek and sat down next to her "But you get to spend the entire day with our beautiful son who loves you a lot and whom we love a lot."

"Still, I'm a surgeon and I want to be inside an OR." Meredith said and looked at Derek with Bambi eyes secretly hoping he'd offer her to scrub in.

"and you are going to be there a lot, but right now you should be happy that you get to spend so much time with your son. You get to take him for a walk, you feed him, you bathe him, you make sure he sleeps, just enjoy it, it's going to be over before you know it. In four weeks you are going to be back at work and you will long to see Christopher and sneak up to daycare to have a look at him in between surgeries. You are an amazing surgeon and an amazing mother and right now you can focus on the latter. They haven't cured death yet, so there are going to be plenty of sick people at the hospital in a month." Derek tried to cheer his wife up and took Christopher out of his little bed to cradle him.

"Have I ever told you that you are the most amazing husband ever?" Meredith smiled and got up to bring Christopher's clothes to the nursery.

"No, but I like to hear it. You can tell me as often as you wish to." Derek answered with a cocky smile and Meredith rolled her eyes regretting to have boosted her husband's ego.

"No, I'm not going to boost your ego more than necessary. But tell me more about the tumor." Meredith said and looked at him.

"You want to talk about the tumor?" Derek wondered and sensed that Meredith truly missed surgeries.

"I do please, I admit I'm a junky." She laughed and sat down next to him again.

"Alright, I tell you about my tumor and you'll tell me about Christopher's day." Derek tried to bargain.

"Fine, but you start." Meredith agreed.

"It was more vascular than the MRI showed." Derek started, but was interrupted by Meredith immediately "But you were able to do the decompression."

"Yes, but" Derek tried to continue, but Meredith interrupted him again. "you weren't able to find a plane to dissect."

The enthusiasm she showed was remarkable. In all his years Derek had seldom met a resident that was as amazed by rare tumors as he was. He smiled and teased Meredith "You really are surgery deprived. Anyway, no plane, nothing. It was just, … You know what…"

"What are you doing?" Meredith didn't really listen to him ad wanted to know more. Anything Derek would do, could possibly kill the patient or make it impossible for him to ever walk again, but she observed how her husband had opened a marker and had started to draw on the wall. "You are drawing on the wall"

"Watch and learn" Derek smiled and continued to draw the blood vessels.

"Learn to teach our child better but to draw on the walls, yeah" She teased him.

"Okay. Tumor, it's here. "

"You have completely lost your mine" Meredith said and was left to stare at the wall with an open mouth.

"T7 goes all the way up to T2"

"You are drawing on the wall." Meredith said in disbelief.

"So tell me about our sons day."

"We slept until 7, that's when he decided he was hungry. He had a snack at the milk bar and went back to sleep. I did the laundry and changed his diaper when he started to cry, we went out for a walk, had a nice chat with a random lady in the park, he had another snack and I had lunch while he slept, he smiles when he hears my voice. It was a good day." Meredith summarized everything that had happened and it was hard to conceal that she was starting to be bored out of her mind.

"Glad to hear that." He kissed her "I was in the OR for 10 hours and starred at his exposed cord."

Meredith looked at Derek and their eyes locked "But you didn't cut the cord, he said you could, you didn't even though you knew it would save his life. You didn't cut the cord."

"Well he has still function in his legs."

"You didn't cut the cord, you stood in the OR for 10 hours, you knew the Chief would stop you because you are blocking the OR and you didn't stop, that's what it means, you didn't stop and there must be a reason why."

"Have I told you that you are the most amazing wife ever?" Derek leaned over to kiss her.

"Yes, you actually told me about my admirable qualities before." Meredith laughed and kissed him.

* * *

The next day started just as boring as the day before. The house felt too empty when she was alone with Christopher and by now she was running out of things to do. When she heard the door bell, she walked downstairs and saw Addison at the front door.

"Hello, Grey. I brought someone." Addison said holding Maria in her arms.

"Yeah." Meredith said and raised an eyebrow.

"I was going shopping for groceries and I was driving by your house." Addison said, but Meredith was surprised.

"Where did you go shopping, your apartment is at the other side of town." She reminded Addison.

Addison was ashamed that Meredith had caught her lie and admitted "Fine, I know this is weird, but I'm freaking out if I have to spend another day alone in my apartment. Mark is at the hospital all day and I"

"go crazy because the only person you can talk to isn't able to reply." Meredith interrupted her.  
"Yeah." Addison laughed. She was glad she wasn't the only one who felt like that "And I hate the other mothers in the park. I met with other mother's of newborns, but all they talk about are their kids. I hate them. Them and their judgy eyes."

"Come in." Meredith smiled.

* * *

Addison and Meredith spend the entire day together. They had tea, ordered a pizza and took the kids for a walk before putting them into Christopher's bed to sleep "They look so peaceful and happy."

"Perfect. " Addison smiled and asked "Do you miss work? I would kill to be in an OR again, but Richard insists…"

"… on 8 weeks maternity leave, I know." Meredith laughed "And it drives me insane. Before I stepped a foot into the OR I never understood why my mom was so obsessed with surgery. I hated her because she always picked surgery over me and here I am with my beautiful baby son longing to be back in the OR and leaving him in daycare. "

Addison sensed that Meredith wasn't happy with herself right now and tried to encourage her "You don't stop being a surgeon, we are mothers and surgeons now. At least I hope so, pretend that it is that way, that I don't suck at this and ruin a perfectly fine baby's life the way my parents ruined mine."

"It just feels like the others are all progressing with the careers and their amazing surgeries, Cristina gets to perform her first solo surgery and I'm stuck here." Meredith voiced her feelings "I'm here with a baby and I'm not sure if I can be a mother because my mom was never a mother or she sucked at being a mother, she was a surgeon."

"Have you talked to Derek about this?" Addison bit her lips.

"No because he has this amazing family, and I just never experienced this sort of dynamic." Meredith looked at her attending. "I just know that I love Christopher, but I also love the high you experience after surgery, the high of having saved a life."

"Just talk to him, he'll understand." Addison tried to persuade her. She knew Derek better than most people "I'm sure he loves you and don't feel guilty about wanting to go back to work. We are surgeons, it's who we are and don't be jealous of Yang, you are a lot better than her when it comes to compassion and bed site manners and your technique is quite fine for a second year resident."

"Thank you."

* * *

They sat new to each other for a while when Addison started to ramble something about cheating out of the blue "Do you think cheating is genetic? I mean my dad cheated on my mom, more than once, it was almost pathologic. And I cheated on Derek. He doesn't know about it, at least I think he doesn't. Mark and I slept together, we were already separated, but we were still married. Mark left the next day."

Meredith looked at her confused. "I think it's a choice you make. Nothing genetic. Sometimes you feel lonely enough and feel like the person you once loved doesn't give you what you need at that moment"

"Thank you"

"You are welcome"

"I better get going, Mark should be home soon, I have to get back to my cave before he finds out that I removed our daughter from the sterile environment he created for her. See you, Dr. Grey."

"See you Dr. Montgomery, and feel free to call if you need someone to talk"

* * *

Meredith went to bed after Addison left at 9.30 pm she knew she'd be up again at 3.00 am because Christopher always woke up at this time of the night. She smiled when Derek walked in 15 minutes later. He lay down next to her and she started talking like a waterfall "Okay, so I've heard almost everything from Cristina, but I wanna hear your version. When did you decide to cut? Where did you cut. I wanna hear everything start from the beginning, tell me everything. " Meredith looked at Derek who didn't answer "Derek? Derek?"

"Brilliant, I'm the one that was up all day and you fall asleep on me. That's what all the boys that are close to me are doing these days. Derek, wake up." Meredith pushed Derek.

"Ugh." He sighed and looked up like he had been asleep for hours.

"I need you to… " she continued, but he had closed his eyes. "you are sleeping again."


	6. Chapter 4

_Theresa: Thank you! It's going to be a while until they move because Derek wants it to be cozy from day one._

 _Shelley: Thank you! I wouldn't say they are becoming friends, but they grow closer and they can relate to each other because they are in the same situation. I stopped giving titles because I'm just too lazy/busy right now. Glad you like the story. There is more to come!_

 _Trisha: Glad you liked the story!_

 _Dora: Thank you! I finished the layout for the whole story now and hope to update a little bit more frequently once I got used to my new work schedule._

 _Cheryl: Glad you like the story._

 _Charlene: No holiday for me, it was just another ordinary (arguably very hot) saturday on the other side of the atlantic ocean. Glad you like the story. A lot more to come._

 _Melanie: Thanks for the review. I agree, Addison and Mer have a lot in common, maybe we are going to explore more of it later, but it seems that Derek doesn't like their interaction too much._

 _Patsy: Thank you for review. Right now Meredith is insecure because Meredith and the struggle of keeping her personal life in balance, she'll exhibit some growth along the lines._

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

 _Doctors live in a world of constant progress and forward motion. Stand still for a second, and you'll be left behind. But as hard as we try to move forward, as tempting as it is to never look back, the past always comes back to bite us in the ass. And as history shows us again and again, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it._

A few weeks had past and Meredith finally went back to work. She was ecstatic and had been looking forward to this day in a while. It had been the rainy afternoons she spent alone at the house that had made her miss the hospital like crazy. Even though Derek would stay with Christopher until he had gotten used to being away from his mom for the day, Meredith was still feeling weird when she walked into the hospital at 6.00 am. Saying good bye to him in the morning had been difficult and she felt torn between those two worlds. As she left the elevator she shambled into the locker room with a feeling of guilt. She hadn't seen Cristina ever since she had gotten discharged from the hospital. They had talked on the phone almost every day, but seeing her best friend felt different. "You are back." Cristina said while putting on her scrub top. "About time"

"I am." Meredith nodded and tried to cover up her insecurity "It was weird to leave Christopher with Derek this morning, because it's the first time I'm away from him in weeks but I will carpe this diem so much, there hasn't ever been a diem that was carped so much."

Cristina shook her head and noticed "You miss Christopher. This child ruined you."

"Yes, I miss him." Meredith nodded and pictures of her beautifully sleeping baby boy came to her mind.

"You are going to be fine. Montgomery is back today too, Barbie has been ecstatic for days." Cristina tried to encourage Meredith. While she could not understand what Meredith was thinking, she still wanted to cheer her up "Sloan is staying at home with the child. Who leaves their children alone with Sloan?"

Meredith reminded her that Sloan was more than a baby sitter. Addison had told her so much about his overprotective behavior and she doubted that he be a bad father based on what she heard. The manwhore had been tamed by the young lady that was sleeping in the nursery next to his bed room. "He's the father."

"Mer, Great to have you back." Jackson came in when Meredith was putting away her purse into her locker and asked "So what is it like, being a mom?"

"I like it. It's fantastic. When you look into his eyes." Meredith said with a happy smile on her face and while saying those words she realized that she was getting emotional "Crap, hormones, don't make me cry because I'll start lactating."

"Too late." Cristina said and looked at the stains on Meredith's scrub top. April came over and offered a few tissues, but Meredith had already pulled out wipes from her bag.

Meredith looked down on her top and cursed herself and her hormones, but she wanted to continue breast feeding at least for a while. This was certainly one of the downsides of breast feeding, but the bonding with Christopher during the process made up for every downside imaginable. She felt closer to him than she did to anyone on this planet. "Crap. I'll take care of that."

Cristina was getting more impatient and looked at her watch, she had a surgery scheduled at 6.20 am and needed to get into the OR. "Anyway, I'm away, I have a surgery at 7.30, I have to go and scrub in. I'm doing an appendectomy all by myself."

For a second Meredith felt jealous, this was Cristina's second solo procedure while she still had to do her first. Meredith let out a little sigh and looked at her schedule for the week "Well, I'm in the skills lab because apparently everyone assumes that I forgot all about my training in the past 8 weeks." She had been looking forward to getting back into the OR for weeks, in fact it had been a frequent theme when Addison and she met, but her new schedule sucked all the excitement out of her. She would be stuck in the skills lab all week revising ten basic general procedures.

"I haven't been in an OR in two weeks either, Meredith. This merger sucks." Jackson sighed. When they were working at Mercy West competition had been less intense and he was able to clock at least 6 hours of surgery a day. But as he was on OB/Gyn Addison's absence had also factored into Jackson's surgery deprivation.

"It's what happens if the attending you are assigned to is on maternity leave." Alex smiled as he was about to perform his first solo surgery. It was an easy tonsillectomy but he was looking forward to it nonetheless.

* * *

Meredith had finished her 2nd hernia repair of the day when someone came looking for her. "Meredith?" Dr. Webber came into the skills lab room. Meredith looked up and spotted the Chief of surgery at the door.

"Dr. Webber. What are you doing here?" she wondered and continued cutting the mesh.

"I just wanted to check on you. I promised your mom to look after you before she died. I know the first day at work isn't easy for a first time mom." He said. She looked at him and wondered how he could possibly know.  
She smiled and answered politely, but began to rant immediately "I'm fine. Christopher is safe at home with Derek and I'm here in a skills lab practicing a hernia repair I was able to do when I was twelve because my mother developed the technique we are supposed to use. But apparently the board thinks staying at home with a baby turns you into a complete moron who doesn't know their hand from their ass."

He observed what she was doing for a few minutes and said "You have a very fine technique indeed. I haven't seen this since, well, I think since I saw your mother operate. She taught you well."

Meredith smiled and felt her heart tearing apart slowly as Richard Webber had just reminded her of the countless hours she had spent in the OR gallery imitating her mother as a child "She never taught me. I just tried to observe and make her notice me. Tried to make her pay attention. I knew the steps of a laparoscopic repair before I was premed. Incision and dissection, port placement, understanding the anatomy triangle of pain, triangle of doom, reducing the hernia sac and fixating the mesh. Complications are bleeding, nerve injuries, spermatic cord injuries, bladder injuries, bowel injuries, bowel obstruction, wound infections, seromas, persistent pain and reoccurrence."

"I could teach you other procedures, more advanced procedures if you want. I know it's not easy for you, with the baby and the merger. Ellis was struggling with keeping everything in balance as a resident." The Chief said reminiscing about the past and the beginning of Ellis' residency when Ellis Grey had been just another resident and not THE Ellis Grey. "You might not believe me, but leaving you at home was hard on her too. We could meet every day for an hour or two and watch some of my surgical tapes and you can perform the procedure on a dummy after that and maybe you get to scrub in with me when a case comes in."

"I'll think about it. Thank you." Meredith sighed and bit her lower lip. She was hesitant to let the man who had broken her mother's heart and had caused so much hardship in her life become her mentor. She didn't know whether she was ready to let the father of her half sister in on her life.

* * *

"Oh, I like seeing that they don't let you butcher into people right after coming back." Reed said after the Chief had left. She had been practicing hernia repairs on a dummy behind Meredith. "And guilt tripping Dr. Webber into teaching you because of what happened between him and your mom, that's so sad."

"Do you have a problem with me? Because I'm sort of busy practicing hernia repairs here." Meredith turned around and noted "So unless you have anything to say to me, why don't you go and fix your own hernias." After she had finished talking to Reed and had started to work on the fixation of the mesh of yet another hernia yet another person came looking for her.

"Hey Grey, how are you?" Addison wondered and came up to her dummy.

"You are on the wrong floor, the surgical unit isn't on this floor and I'm not on your service. In fact I'm not on anyone's service." Meredith tried to get rid of the OB/Gyn who had been dreaming with her about their first day of work for weeks now. She knew that Addison would be in the OR today and she knew that she was stuck in the skills lab with a bunch of hernias unless a miracle happened.  
"I was looking for you. I thought you might need someone to talk." Addison smiled "Coming over to your house and talking to someone who understands. This isn't easy for me and I thought it wouldn't be easy for you either. I miss her and I don't want to call Mark after 3 hours to check up on them. I feel weak. I would love to carry her around with me and be in the OR with her, take her everywhere because" Addison paused and sighed.

Meredith looked up and completed her sentence "…he's the most amazing thing you ever made. I feel the same. I want to pick up my phone and call Derek so badly. What makes it worse is that I don't get to see patients. At least you don't have to repair fictional hernias here, but get to scrub in on real patients, do your own surgeries, deliver babies, see patients. Talk to patients. Sorry I'm ranting. It's just that this is the 8th hernia I fixed today. I do it in under 35 minutes now which is pretty impressive." Meredith was sure that hernias would haunt her in her dreams the following night.

"You could scrub in if you want to." Addison suggested and Reed rolled her eyes.

"I'm not on your service, Dr. Montgomery, it wouldn't be fair to" Meredith said and tried to turn down Addison.

"Yeah it wouldn't be." Reed muttered and tried to fixate the mesh, but it wasn't nearly as easy as she thought it would be.

"Harper Avery's grandson or Dr. Addamson?" Addison leaned over and whispered into Meredith ear "The competition has been very bad since the merger, you shouldn't care about fairness."

"Yeah. Ellis Grey's daughter doesn't care about something like that anyway." Reed stated loud enough for Meredith to her.

"I guess I shouldn't." Meredith ranted "But you don't have to do this because the two of us just had a baby, well two babies, any random number of babies for that matter." She took a short pause and wondered "Do you feel like a part of you is missing right now?"

"Yes, I do." Addison nodded and took out her phone "We should call them after surgery and you'll scrub in with me on my TEF case, charts at the station, just ask nurse Sonya for it. You know the procedure, you scrubbed in on one before. You can go back to your hernias after that. I see you have only a few to go until you can move on to the next procedure."

* * *

While Meredith had managed to keep herself from showing off her son at work, it turned out that her husband wasn't as strong willed as she was. The nurses and other hospital staff was curious to see baby Christopher when dad came into the hospital with his son. "Oh my god, my nephew is visiting me at work. Oh my god, you are getting bigger every day and I don't notice it because all I do right now is sleep, study and work." Lexie said when she passed Derek in the hall.

"Intern exams?" Derek wondered. He was able to remember the countless hours Meredith and her other roommates had spent to study for that exams.

"Yeah, intern exams." Lexie sighed and caressed Christopher's chin softly.

"Lexie, do you know how much longer Meredith will take?" Derek asked. He had been looking for her in the skills lab but Dr. Adamson had been less than helpful in location her whereabouts. "I thought she was stuck in the skills lab. You can page her. She'll be down here in no time."

"No, she was in the OR with Dr Mongomery"

"As in Dr. Montgomery?" Derek raised an eyebrow. He was unaware that Addison and Meredith had met frequently in the past few weeks while Mark and he had been at work and was surprised to hear that Meredith got to scrub in on a surgery with a surgeon whose service she wasn't on.

"Yes, as in your ex wife." Lexie smiled "I can sit here and wait with you. Can I hold him?

"Sure, go ahead." Derek nodded and handed Christopher over carefully to his aunt.

Lexie was amazed. She loved her nephew as much as Mollie's daughter who she hadn't seen in ages. "You are so adorable, you have the Grey nose, I can tell that because my nose looked just like your when I was a baby and your cousin Laura's nose looked just like yours, too. But you have your daddy's eyes. He's has cute eyes"

"I never realized babies had this effect on women." Derek laughed "I had a hard time passing the nurses' station with him because everyone wanted to see him."

"Why are you here? It's your first day of paternity leave, Meredith and Dr. Montgomery didn't take the kids here when they were on maternity leave and that were 8 weeks and you don't get passed day 1." Lexie laughed.

"We are weak." Derek admitted.

"And you should go, it's hard enough on Meredith as it is." Lexie told him. "Cold turkey. She has to get used to being apart from Christopher for her own sake."

* * *

Addison had just finished the most important step of her TEF procedure, when she noted movement up in the gallery. She looked up and caught a glimpse of what she thought was her husband. She kept looking up to the gallery until Meredith noticed that something was going on up there. She turned her head slowly when Addison whispered "Oh my god, I think I'm hallucinating. Dr. Grey, turn around and look up to the gallery and tell me that you don't see Dr. Sloan and our baby girl up there.

"Well, I'd be lying." She said looking at Marc Sloan.

"Jackie, please turn on the intercom. Addison told one of the scrub nurses. After the nurse had went the few feet and enabled the system Addison talked to her husband "Mark, what are you doing here? You are not supposed to sneak into OR galleries."

"Our little girl was missing her mommy and I wanted to show her where her mother was saving all those lives and making sure other babies were healthy." Mark said with a feeling of pride.

"Mark, you should go home. The gallery is not the right place for a baby." Addison said in a determined tone. The baby was too young to care and had to get used to her daily routine.

"You might want to tell Derek, too." Mark laughed.

"Derek?" Meredith and Addison wondered at once and Meredith uttered a second "Derek?" before Mark could answer. Her baby was very close to her and she got a little excited even though she didn't like the fact that her husband was parading the child around the hospital on his first day off.

"He was sitting here with me and just left to change Christopher's diaper 5 minutes ago." Mark laughed.

"Mark, take her home." Addison said and he caught a look that said 'Go now or I'm going to kill you'

"Don't blame me, the baby was missing her mommy. And we have to take a photo: Baby's first surgery."Mark said and took Maria's arm to use it to wave to Addison.

"I don't think that's what normal people put into their photo albums." Meredith laughed.

"We don't have to take a picture of that and now go, I'm going to finish this procedure and we can meet in the cafeteria in 40 minutes." Addison told her boyfriend before she continued the procedure.

* * *

When Meredith walked through the cafeteria she was surprised to get no sight of Derek "Lexie, where are Derek and Christopher?" she asked her sister when she finally put her tray onto the table. Standing up for 2 hours had been more exhausting than she remembered.

"I told them to go home." Lexie told her shoving a spoon of yoghurt into her mouth.

"You did what?" Meredith widened her eyes and looked at Lexie. Meeting Derek and Christopher had been something she was looking forward to since finding out they were in the hospital.

"I told them to go home. You have to get used to being away from Christopher. It's your first day back and you still have 4 hours of work left. It would be…" Lexie explained, but was interrupted by Meredith.

"… harder if I see him now? Well I could have breast fed him instead of going to the resident lounge and pump the milk." With Derek and Christopher gone she would have to go to the resident's lounge and lock herself in there to pump breast milk so she wouldn't start lactating out of the blue later in the day.

"I didn't think of that. Sorry." Lexie said apologetic.

"It's fine." Meredith smiled and wondered "How is studying for your intern test going?"

"I'm set. Photographic memory, remember? I'm kind of a bad ass when it comes to memorizing anything." Lexie giggled.

"You are, kind of a bad ass." Meredith admitted "You're a Grey." They both sat next to each other while Meredith ate her spaghetti and Lexie finished her yoghurt. "How could anyone ever choose to be apart from their child? I don't get it. It's only been a few hours and I already miss him like crazy even though I know he's going to be there when I come home." Meredith wondered after she had finished her plate.

"Are you talking about the adoption?" Lexie looked at her.

"Yes, I don't understand why mom would do something like this. She could have raised this baby. I would have had a sister or a brother and she still would have gotten to be a surgeon." Meredith sighed. All those years there had been a child. She had always felt like she wasn't good enough, but apparently there had been a child that Ellis had felt wasn't worthy of being raised by her.

"Do you want to find out more about what happened?" Lexie asked straight out. It was a question Meredith had not answered yet.

"I don't know, I don't know if I want to find out. It's cold to abandon your child like this. Do you think I could ever get that cold? I mean I have her genes and she raised me." Meredith looked at Lexie. Becoming her mother was Meredith biggest fear.

"Meredith, you don't know what happened. I mean it looks bad, but maybe it wasn't so bad when you know more. A lot of adopted children have very nice lives." Lexie said with a cheery smile.

"I better get back to my hernias. The skills lab is waiting for me again." Meredith laughed and left in a hurry. She really did not know if she wanted to know more about what had happened.

* * *

"Reed? You are still here." Meredith stated when she walked into the lab.

"Yeah." Reed sighed and rolled her eyes wondering why she had to be stuck with Meredith Grey.

Meredith smiled and sat down next to her for a moment. "You seem to have a problem with me. I don't know why because I haven't done anything to you. So I'm just interested in finding out. Do you?"

"I don't." Reed denied, but it was obvious that she was lying.

"You do. So just tell me." Meredith said and took a guess"Is it because I'm married to an attending and had a baby or is it because my mother is Ellis Grey or do you just don't like me?"

"All of the above." Reed smiled and shifted her attention back to her 10th hernia repair.

"Fine. That's all I wanted to know. And you are a bitch." Meredith told her while getting up and back to her table.

"And you get handed surgeries because of your personal relationship to Dr. Shepherd." Reed challenged her.

Meredith was in no mood to take shit from anyone and wondered "How many surgeries did you scrub in while I was in maternity leave? 40? 50? See it's not that easy to make up for two months maternity leave and I tried to keep up as much as possible while I was at home, I practice on chicken, I read medical journals. So if you want to judge me go ahead." Reed looked at her and was speechless. When Meredith looked at Reed's model, she noted "If you don't like my personality I can live with that. So just cut me some slack and keep it professional. And if I were you I'd check on that hernia because you forgot the triangle of doom, right there."

* * *

Meredith came in through the front door with a huge smile when Derek held Christopher who was resting on his shoulder when she kissed Derek gently "Addison made my day better.

"I don't remember the last time I said that sentence." Derek laughed sarcastically "But it's nice that my ex wife is your new BFF."

"She was nice. We talked a lot" Meredith smiled and went on to brag with the end of her surgery free period "She let me scrub in on an esophageal atresia case with trachea-esophageal fistula on a newborn. It felt good to be in the OR again. I missed it. The rush, the high."

"Mark told me you did well in there and it was great to see you in there again." Derek smiled and followed her into the kitchen, where she drank water from the tap.

She looked up and dried her mouth with one of her hands and shot him a glare "Oh, I almost forgot about the intrusive husbands who paraded their babies around the hospital instead of taking them to the park like normal parents would do." It had killed her to stay at home, but she had forced herself to do it because they had agreed that it was too early for Christopher to be in the hospital in their free time.

Derek smiled and his eyes begged for forgiveness, but she tried to remain angry. He tried to cheer her up. "The baby was missing you and Alex and Izzie have to get some self control. They are very loud and Christopher wouldn't stop crying."

"Alex was in the hospital all day." Meredith told him. Whoever Izzie had sex with, it wasn't Alex. When it came to having sex her mom's house had seen better times.

"That's odd, it sounded like Izzie was making a porn movie in their room." Derek told her, but he knew Meredith wasn't happy that he had brought Christopher to the hospital and had left before she could see him.

"Christopher saw me this morning, you had breast milk in the fridge, you shouldn't have come. I missed him so much and for a minute I forgot how much I miss him and then you show up and all I can think of is that I'm not with Christopher" Meredith told him, but to his surprise she continued on a lighter note " But I kicked ass in that OR. After Addison banned Mark from the gallery she let me finish that procedure. And I fixed 15 hernias in the skills lab today."

Derek nodded "Fine, no more trips to the hospital until I go back to work. I'm proud of you. Mom called and said she needs a nice family picture for the wall.

"Fine. We can send her one, can't we. You take tons of pictures. It feels like a 24/7 surveillance." Meredith teased her husband, who had bought a new digital camera to document their son's every move "You are kind of obsessed with our baby. Not the cute way, the stalker obsessed way.

"He's cute. I just want to document how cute he is because nobody would believe me and mom enjoys the daily email with pictures of her precious grandson." He said in his cocky tone.

"You are going crazy. It's time we get him into daycare." Meredith giggled.

"I found out more about the adoption." Derek said and handed over a brown envelope to her.

"Why? I'm not even sure I want to know anything about it." Meredith reacted angry and grabbed the envelope only to put it away into one of their drawers before anyone else would find it.

"It's only the name of the agency Meredith, calm down." Derek told her. He had hired a private investigator to find out more about Ellis' adoption, but so far this was the only thing he had uncovered.

"Do you think I can do better than my mom?"

"She was an extraordinary surgeon." Derek stated.

"I'm not talking about the surgeon bit." Meredith corrected him. "I'm just afraid you can't be both, you can't be a good surgeon and a good mother. You can only be one thing."

"You can do it. You are extraordinary and I'm going to make sure that you have the time to be both." Derek promised her "My mom raised 5 of us and I never felt like she didn't love us, even when she was away working two jobs. You can do it. We can."


	7. Chapter 5

_Sorry, busy weekend and busy working week. Got home early today and decided to complete another chapter of my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

 _Patsy: Thank you for the review! Glad you like the story. There's going to be a bigger Lexie storyline starting in the next few chapters. She had good intentions because she knew how hard it was for Meredith to be away from her son. I can assure you that the shooting won't happen. Not every character is going to survive though ;)_

 _Shelley: About Izzie… you are going to find out… but Derek isn't going to be the one that investigates why Izzie is acting the way she does_

 _Theresa: More on Lexie to come to come, she had good intentions. and you'll find out what's going on with Izzie soon._

 _Linda: Yeah, the Mercy Westers are going to cause a little bit trouble. At least Reed is._

 _Darlene: Thanks! I'm glad you like it!_

 _Nicole: More to come!_

 _Carla: Glad you like it! I wanted to show some growth in Meredith because while the circumstances of their wedding have been crazy, the pregnancy and birth and the relationship to Derek helped her to mature._

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

 _Psychology researchers now claim that it is important for babies to learn how to stop crying by themselves. My mother believed in it. I learned to live my life alone. I learned not to ask any questions. I learned to occupy myself. I observed and imitated. But do you want that? Fortunately, many parents still prefer to comfort their babies. If they didn't, we might find ourselves living in a society of very solitary people, who had learned to control their distress rather than to find strength through sharing it. But sharing makes the process of letting go even harder._

"First day of daycare for you, Christopher. You are a big boy now." Meredith told Christopher, who was laying in his infant carrier which Meredith had positioned on top of the kitchen table.

"He'll be picking up girls for dances before we know it." Derek smiled and gave him his bottle "You are a big boy now. So I hope you behave when we leave you with Karen and Ellen today. They are going to take good care of you."

"And mommy is going to visit you." Meredith told him while caressing his cheek with her index finger.

"And daddy is going to visit you." Derek added.

"Can we visit too?" Lexie wondered while pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"Guess the daycare is going to the place with the highest ratio of surgeons per square meter in the hospital at lunch." Alex laughed "Sloan and Montgomery are going to be hovering over Maria like they did yesterday too."

"Let's go, Alex." Izzie came in holding her car keyes. "I don't want to be late for Dr. Montgomery's minimally invasive fetal spina bifida surgery. "

* * *

Meredith and Derek had just dropped off Christopher at daycare. He hadn't cried and one of the girls had tried to distract him while she and Derek left. "Don't cry." Derek told Meredith after they walked to the resident locker room after dropping off Christopher at daycare. Leaving Christopher somewhere so close was hard for Meredith. She missed Christopher every second of the day, but having him close to her at work made it worse.

Meredith looked at Derek with teary eyes, swallowed down her tears and stated "I'm not crying."

Derek took her hand and kissed it, smiled and calmed her down "He's going to be fine."

Meredith smiled and sighed "Yeah, but he's so close now and I still hardly get to see him." She was instantly reminded of her first day at work when Lexie had sent Derek and Christopher away. While it had been been painful at first, it had made the rest of her day easier.

"It's going to be fine." Derek smiled.

Meredith looked at her husband who had spent the past four weeks at home with Christopher: He and Mark had met almost every day and Meredith always felt like the kids had been spoilt a lot by their fathers. She was glad Christopher got to spend time at daycare and Derek's obsession with Christopher would be eased down by returning to the OR. She smiled "You are going to be busy anyway as it's your first day back after a month of cradling our son."

"It's going to be great to be inside an OR again after a month of taking care of Christopher. I understand why you were dying to be back." Derek smiled.

"Are you scrubbing in with Addison?" Meredith asked. She was glad that they finally got to talk about medical topics again.

"I am. How about you?"

"I'm scrubbing in on a laparoscopic cholecystectomy with Dr. Webber. Well, technically he's scrubbing in with me because he told me I'd be performing the procedure." Meredith stated and looked at him. Even though she had been incredibly excited ever since Richard had told her she was about to perform her first solo surgery, she had not told Derek about it.

"First solo surgery. Impressive!" He smiled and kissed her forehead. "But Richard should have given you a laparoscopic common bile duct exploration."

"Well, I'm one of the last residents in my year who hasn't done a solo surgery and I'm glad I don't have to perform the Grey method. My mother would be rolling in her grave if she hadn't been cremated if she saw me do it." Meredith rolled her eyes.

"You would do great. It doesn't matter whether you are the first one to perform a solo surgery or the last one. I'm sure you are going to do great."

Meredith had trained for this surgery for days. She had spent every waking minute going over each step over and over again. She had memorized every trick her mother had written down in her journal, she was prepared and ready "I've done about 20 in the skills lab and watched the tape 4 times. I should be very familiar with the procedure."

"I'll be in the gallery cheering for you." Derek said with excitement.

Meredith shook her head. "You'll be in the OR with Addison because they are scheduled at the same time."

"I'm going to be thinking of you." Derek promised her, but Meredith wasn't happy with this answer either. "Don't! Think about the little baby in front of you!" She insisted "The baby that is still inside his mother's warm and protective womb."

"Wanna go back and have a look at our son again before we scrub in?" Derek wondered. She nodded and they went back to get a quick second look at their son who was lying next to Maria.

* * *

"She didn't even cry when we left her in daycare. She hates me. She's three months old and she hates me." Addison cried and her head rested on Mark's shoulder.

"She feels safe and she's a baby." Bailey told her while she walked past the two surgeons.

"The baby broke us. We used to be awesome and now we are here crying because our 3 months old baby doesn't cry when we are leaving her in the care of responsible daycare workers." Addison said and looked at Mark "And all I can think of is the bad stuff that might happen to her while she is in daycare. What happened to me?"

Bailey rolled her eyes and pulled Addison away from Mark. "You can go now, Sloan" she said and looked at Addison. "You fool became a mother. It's normal. Happens to everyone! Now stop crying and go back to work. Fool! You can go back after your first surgery. Just look at him. That's what I do when I see how Tuck is doing."

"You have a son, I keep forgetting that, why do I keep forgetting that?" Addison wondered.

"Because I never talk about him at work because it would remind me that I can't be with him. At work I'm a surgeon, at home I'm a mother. Doesn't do nobody no good to be a mother at work and a surgeon at home or both at the same time."

* * *

"How is Mer doing in there?" Lexie wondered when she walked into the gallery.

"Not too bad, she made the incision and and finished the placement of the infraumbilicial 10mm trocar and the placement of the subxyphoid 10mm trocar and now she's about to place the 5mm Ports under direct vision." George told her and looked at Lexie.

"Why are you not in the gallery of OR1?" Lexie wondered. The spina bifida surgery was a lot more interesting than this standard procedure.

"I wanted to support Meredith" George smiled "She's been a good friend. I was living at her house before I transferred to Mercy West. Why aren't you?"

"I wanted to see how she was doing in there." Lexie told him. "She's my sister"

"Do you know that she hated you when she found out about you?" George laughed.

"That's what it felt like anyway." Lexie admitted. They had been off to a rocky start.

"But things changed. I thought I loved Izzie, but I'm alone now and she's with Alex." George sighed.

" And you wonder if you are ever going to have someone that close again." Lexie sighed.

"Wanna go to Joe's for a beer after work" George wondered "we could be lonely together and drink away our sorrows."

* * *

"You have visitors up there, Meredith." Richard said and looked up at the gallery.

"George and Lexie. Yeah." Meredith smiled. She was glad someone was there while Derek was in surgery with Izzie and Addison.

It wasn't long until Richard start to reminisce about his days with her mother "When your mother performed the Grey method for the first time the gallery was packed. Everyone wanted to see it. Her name was all over the hospital."

"Her name was all over ever medical journal in the country." Meredith laughed.  
"So where are we?" he wondered and wanted Meredith to explain what she was about to do.

"The gallbladder fundus and corpus join the neck of the gallbladder at the infundibulum and continue on to the cystic duct. The cystic duct typically courses to the common bile duct. The cystic artery arises from the common hepatic or right hepatic artery." Meredith explained what she saw on the screen "I'm now identifying and isolating the cystic duct's junction with the infundibulum and identifying and isolating the cystic artery."

"Alright, go ahead." He smiled.

"My mother wrote that her first solo surgery was one of the most terrifying experiences of her life." Meredith stated. Ellis had written about it in great length in one of her journals. She had been a second year resident.

"Did she?" Richard laughed "She seemed very calm. Just like you."

"I'm calm." Meredith smiled "Well, I'm worried, but not about this surgery or that something might go wrong because I know I can deal with that, but I'm worrying about how my son is doing in daycare right now, but I know what I'm doing here and I think I'm doing okay."

"It's good if you are confident."

"But not over confident. Because overconfident surgeons make mistakes." Meredith sighed and smiled. "My mother kept telling me. Maybe that's why she always tried to give me the feeling that I wasn't good enough. But I'm confident."

"Well it's better than spitting up in your mask. That's what I was doing during my first solo surgery." Richard whispered.

"You were?" Meredith looked up for a moment and looked back at the screen. "I'm going to stop talking now and clip the cyctic artery and divide it."

"You don't have to tell me, it's your OR and your surgery." Richard said and Meredith paused for a second and looked at him.

"Come on, you told me how good I was at requesting the scalpel when I started to make the incision, so I guess you do want me to say what I'm doing." She laughed.

"I see what you are doing, Dr. Grey."

"Cystic artery is clipped and divided, I'm going to continue with the clipping of the cystic duct." She said and looked at the screen again. Laparoscopic surgeries took a lot of concentration and training, but without looking at the screen there was no way to do it properly without causing harming to the patient.

"Go ahead." Richard nodded.

"Are you sure?" Meredith wondered with a little smile on her face. She was glad he could not see the smirk under the mask because he would think that she was overconfident "Gallbladder is freed from the liver bed and I was very careful with electrocauterization to avoid damage to the surrounding structures."

"Congratulations Dr. Grey." One of the scrub nurses told her.

* * *

"You did wonderful in there." Richard said with the pride a mentor had for his student "Your mother would be very proud of you." He knew Ellis would have wanted to know every detail.

"No, she would have told me that I was lucky I didn't kill the patient." Meredith laughed.

"She would have been proud" Richard insisted "Given the circumstances of your departure here and how everything was my fault I have to make it up to you and I promised your mother to look after you when she died. We never got to fix our relationship after she left and …"

Meredith listened to him and with all the adrenaline that was rushing through her body there was only one conclusion she could come up with "Oh my god, you knew. All this training und tutoring you are doing is because you feel guilty that you told my pregnant mother to get rid of that child. How could I not see this?" she asked herself and continued to ramble "You knew that mom was pregnant. You knew mom was pregnant and you made her move to Boston because you knew and you didn't want her child. The baby and I are the reason you never picked her."

"What are you talking about Meredith?" Richard wondered. This was the first time somebody mentioned the possibility that he had a child.

"You knew." Meredith said and looked at him while turning off the faucet.

"What did I know?" Richard wanted to know. Nothing Meredith had just told him made sense.

"You knew Ellis was pregnant." Meredith repeated slowly. "That day in the park at the carousel, don't tell me you don't remember because I know you do because it was the last time you saw her before we left Seattle. She told you that day and you left her and stayed with Adele. That's why she was crying, that's why she tried to kill herself, that's why she left dad and that's why we moved to Boston, that's why she put up the child for adoption."

"Ellis was pregnant?" He asked

"You knew."

"No Meredith, I didn't. I wanted to have a child, all my life I wanted to have a child. Ellis. She never told me. I would have picked her if I had known. I just didn't want to be the reason she left you in a broken home."

"My home was broken when you started sleeping with her." Meredith snapped "You would have stayed with her for the wrong reason. She didn't want you to stay for the child, she wanted you to stay for her. She tried to kill herself that night. What were you fighting about?"

He took a deep breath. The memories of this day had haunted him in his sleep for more than 25 years now. "It's difficult. We had made a pact. She was going to leave Thatcher and I was going to leave Adele and…"

"… you didn't go through with it. You told her that day and she tried to kill herself."

"I never knew that. Nobody ever told me." Richard tried to explain.

"She did and she was pregnant and had a baby." Meredith said and looked at him. While she did not say anything he could see that her eyes were accusing him. She thought that he was responsible.

"Meredith, I never knew about all of this. Ellis kept this from me." He said and looked at her. She must have known about this for a long time he thought "How long do you know about this adoption?"

"I'm going to talk to the patient and check with the internist." Meredith turned around and left the scrub room. She had known about this for quite some time, but so far she only knew fragments because she had not opened the envelope with whatever the private investigator had found out.

"If you go now, Meredith, you can work with Dr. Bailey from now on." Dr. Webber said, but Meredith didn't care. She did not want to work with the man who had ruined her mother's life and was now trying to make friendly conversation about how well he knew her mother. There were more important things than her mother's ex lover to focus on.

* * *

"Oh my god, Mer. You did so good in there. Were you nervous? Because I would have been nervous." Lexie stated when Meredith walked out of the scrub room.

"I don't need a cheerleader." Meredith said when her sister started to hug her "I did good in the OR. I did not so good in the scrub room."

Lexie let go of her sister and looked at Meredith "What happened?"

"I may or may not have yelled at Dr. Webber because of the whole adoption thing." Meredith blared out "Turns out he didn't know. Ellis never told him."

"How did he react?" Lexie asked even though she knew the likely answer.

"He yelled."

"What adoption thing?" Cristina wondered when she approached the two sisters in the hall.

"I'll tell you later."Meredith said and looked at Lexie, who opened her mouth to ask another question.

"So this whole weird mentoring my ex lover's daughter thing is off?"

"I don't know." Meredith said "But I have to talk to the patient now and I'm going to see how Christopher is doing in daycare."

* * *

Alex walked into the locker room and saw how Izzie and George's mouth were close together. "No, George. Don't. I don't have this kind of feelings for you." Izzie shrugged. George had taken her by surprise and leaned in to kiss her.

George looked down at his feet and tried to avoid eye contact. "Sorry."

"What is this?" Alex asked. He could not believe what he saw. He knew that Izzie had slept with George at the end of their intern year, but this looked real too.

"Nothing" George stated and bit his lower lip.

Alex knew how to interpret body language. Biting your lower lip was a sign of insecurity or lying. He knew something was up and he got angry "What's going on? Don't bullshit me!"

"Alex, it's fine." Izzie tried to calm Alex down and stepped in between him and George.

Alex pushed her away "No it isn't."

"Alex, look at me" Izzie begged "Promise me you give George thirty seconds to get away. Go George." George left the room and they both sat down next to each other.

"I love you." Alex said and looked into Izzie's brown eyes " I haven't told anyone ever, but what I feel for you, it's special."

"I loved Denny, Alex, but you took care of me when I couldn't and I slowly learned to love again to look forward to the future, to love my life." Izzie said.

"I really want to kick his ass." Alex said looking at the door.

"Don't. He's messed up because of the Callie thing." Izzie said. Alex closed his eyes for a moment. This couldn't possibly be the reasonable explanation for this. It had been almost a year since the divorce and the fact that his ex wife had moved on couldn't have possibly sent George into the dark place Alex knew a lot about.

"So what are we going to do in a few weeks when you are supposed to be back in LA?" He looked at her and she looked away. They remained in silence, Alex starred at the floor and Izzie kept looking at the door hoping someone would interrupt them.

When nobody came in she stated: "You have your place here and I have mine at UCLA. I can't stay, Alex."

"Come on, Izzie. Can't you stay for me?" Alex wondered.

"No, Alex. I'm thankful for all you did for me, but I know I can survive on my own because you gave me faith in myself." Izzie said "I don't have a job here."

"I love you Izzie. Why don't you understand?" Alex asked.

"Because I don't know if I loved you. You are Alex. You fixed me after Denny died, it felt great, but it wasn't love."

Alex world was shattered. He was ready to commit, but it seemed like he had been used. "Why did you come back?"

"Because I thought I loved you." Izzie said looking into his eyes. Even though they were sitting right next to each other the distance between them was insurmountable.

"And now you realized you don't?"

"No, I just don't know." Izzie said and got up to leave the room.

* * *

Cristina and Meredith spent their lunch break in front of the window at the day care center looking at Christopher sleeping in his little bed. "He's perfect."

"He's a baby" Cristina stated without the slightest hint of emotion. Babies had no effect on her. She seemed to be immune to their magic "So Webber knocked up your mother?"

"Guess he did and according to him she never told him about it." Meredith stated.

"Kids are like parasites. You have to get rid of them while you still can. They only hinder your career" Cristina stated. Meredith looked at Cristina in shock. She hoped Cristina was kidding.

"Hello, I'm right here." She reminded her friend.

"Yeah and I tell you, run! Run while you still can, it's not too late. If your mother could do it, you can." Cristina said and Meredith just starred at her. If this was a joke Cristina was certainly able to conceal it.

Meredith decided to answer like Cristina was serious. "I couldn't he's way too precious. He's perfect and you are going to be his godmother."

"Why not pick Lexie?" Cristina wondered "Lexie is good with kids. Me on the other hand I'm dark and twisty like you."

"And that's the reason you are going to be a great godmother." Meredith said.

"Just to set the record straight, I don't babysit, I don't talk all funny cutesy to the child, you can send him to me if he needs to have the talk."

"Alright. I'm going to feed this little guy now and you have a surgery to get to." Meredith smiled and opened the door to the daycare to breast feed Christopher before she was paged to the OR again.

* * *

"Webber knows." Meredith said when Derek sat down next to her in the locker room. He was wearing his navy Bowdoin shirt and looked a little confused.

"Knows what?" he wondered.

"He knows." Meredith stated and looked at him. The serious look on her face lead Derek to the conclusion that she was talking about Ellis's second child "You told him about the adoption?"

"Yes, she did." Lexie said.

Reed Adamson entered the room with a big grin on her face which could only mean one thing, bad news for Meredith. She started saying "Meredith, Dr. Webber send me to tell you", but Meredith interrupted her because she knew what Reed was about to tell her "That I'm off his service. Yeah, I figured." Reed nodded.

"Go, I'm sure you have patients to look after. I don't need your judgy eyes." Meredith said with a fake smile.

Reed rolled her eyes and muttered a barely audible " Whatever".

"You heard her. Go away, unless you want me to stab you with a scalpel." Lexie threatened when Reed took more time than any normal person could possibly take. Lexie and Meredith exchanged a look and Derek looked at Lexie in shook. She had always been this sweet person, but everything that had happened since she finished med school had obviously changed her.

"Just because she's married to an attending doesn't mean she is one." Reed told Lexie "She can't tell me anything. And I'm not afraid of you, little Grey".

Derek smiled and got up to talk to Reed. He was overly polite because he knew he wouldn't want to be accused of favoritism or unprofessional behavior: "Dr. Adamson, I'm having a private conversation with my wife and sister in law. I'm going to ask you kindly to leave her alone if she asks you to" He was interrupted by his pager and kissed Meredith "I have to go sweetie."

Lexie got up and positioned herself in front of Reed. "She might not be one, but I can kick your ass. So try me." She stated calmly and smiled. It was a crazy smile.

"That was intense." Meredith told Lexie after Reed had left too.

"Yeah, it really was. But she's just as annoying as this Percy guy and April, she's all over Derek today. She worships him and he sucks. He's too stupid to do a flying whipstitch." Lexie complained "George wondered whether he can come over after work."

"Sure. Why wouldn't he. He used to live there." Meredith wondered.

"Well, I wasn't sure if Izzie would like it. Alex said he had a crush on her."


	8. Chapter 6

_Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you all love the story! As I'm away visiting the family at the weekend you get the update today, I hope you like it._

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

"Webber is still not talking to you?" Izzie wondered when Meredith came into the kitchen. Izzie was going through her salad with her fork and it seemed like something was bothering her.  
"Not a word. It's been three weeks and he's still not talking to me. He's acting like I'm the one that kept a child from him." Meredith said and sat down next to her while Derek went to get coke from the fridge  
"It's weird. When Richard mentored us he was never this irrational." Derek said while pouring Meredith a glass of coke  
She sighed "When it comes to Ellis" but was interrupted by Izzie who added "he is." while starring at her fork.  
"Just look at the fight you and he had when he found out about us." Meredith reminded Derek. The had fought in front of everyone. "But let's talk about something else. Like you and Alex."  
"He's trying too hard to be the perfect guy" Izzie said and looked at her.  
"Because being the perfect guy is a bad thing?" Derek wondered and the two women turned their head and looked at him. They both answered at the same time and blared out "Yes".  
"I don't want perfect, I want Alex, Alex the ass." Izzie said and paused. She breathed in and continued "Well, he is an ass at work. He always gets to scrub in on all the neonatal cases when I'm the one that is here to work with Dr. Montgomery. He sucks all the energy right out of me. I'm tired all the time."  
"Well, he's on peds. He's supposed to scrub in on pediatric surgeries."  
"But I'm here to learn from Addison." Izzie insisted "He can learn from Addison later and last night I was passed my 80 hours work limit and he told the Chief. He actually went to the Chief and told him. Who does that?"  
"Someone who cares about your health?" Meredith suggested.  
"I hate it." Izzie stated "He's treating me like a child"  
"You should talk to him." Meredith suggested and finished her glass of coke. "Anyway, we are going to the park today, have fun."

After a 20 minute drive Derek, Christopher and Meredith arrived at a public park near Thatcher's house. It was a quiet park with a lot of elderly people and hardly any young families walking around. Derek smiled after he had assembled the pram. He pushed Christopher and Meredith walked beside him. It was a nice break from the hospital. "It's so perfect and yet so different than I anticipated. My sisters have plenty of children. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, but it's messier." Derek laughed "but it's perfect"  
"Well, we have a newborn, demanding careers and we are about to move into a new house. That's a text book definition of stressful." Meredith giggled and stopped to kiss her husband.  
"Yet I wouldn't want it any other way." Derek nodded and they both looked at their sleeping son "It's very fulfilling. Saving people's lives, looking into Christopher's eyes, seeing him smile, seeing your smile in his. It's all I could have ever dreamt of. It's like I said when I first came here. I was drowning and you saved me."  
"It's weird. It was never a priority for my mother. Kids never were apparently. Yet, for me Christopher is everything I can think of when I'm at work, if I worry about something it's not my ability to perform a procedure, it's his well being." Meredith said only having eyes for Christopher.  
"And you didn't think it would be that way?" Derek wondered.  
"Well my parents are not exactly role models when it comes to taking care of me. I didn't know I had it in me. I mean look at him. Who could possibly abandon him? I couldn't." Meredith said and caressed Christopher "Do you hear that baby, your mommy will never abandon you?"

They walked for a while and sat down on a bench. "It's our day off, the sun is shining and we are here with our beautiful son. Could life get any better?" Derek wondered and saw that Meredith was looking at him and smiled. "We should do this more often. Just take the day off, you, me and Christopher."  
Meredith nodded, but reminded Derek that she was still a resident. "I'm not the queen of my schedule. You'd have to take this one out with Dr. Bailey. But I agree we should – spend more time as a family."  
"He's growing up so fast." Derek said while Meredith was looking for the lemonade they had brought "Can you give me one of the cans? I don't care, I packed coke and san pellegrino lemonade, just have your pick and give me the other one."  
"I don't know. It's a hard decision." Meredith teased him looking at the two cans and taking way too much time than she'd usually do to pick a flavor before unpacking the sandwiches Derek had bought at a deli. "Screw it, I don't want to drink coke, have it."  
"I love it! What's in there?" Meredith said with big eyes after taking a bite "You made it, didn't you? It's like an orgasm on your tongue. Jesus Derek, I think this is the best sandwich ever made. It's like mind blowing."  
Derek chuckled as he observed how his wife quickly swallowed an entire sandwich in under a minute "I actually bought it at the deli."  
"You did? Where? I need to know. It's really good." Meredith tried to converse with her mouth full.  
"I'm glad you like it. I'm going to take you there for lunch next week. Their coffee isn't too bad either." Derek laughed. Meredith acted like she had starved for a decade and he thought it was kind of cute. "Wednesday would be good. You can savor the memory of the sandwich until then."  
"You should really try them." Meredith told Derek and offered him the rest of her second sandwich.  
"I had one yesterday, you can have all of them. Mark used to go there whenever Addison craved for tuna sandwiches." Derek said.  
"And why do I only find out about this place now?" Meredith wondered and looked at her husband  
"It's on the other side of town." He suggested

* * *

Two weeks passed and Meredith and Derek were stuck at the hospital for most of it. Meredith worked hard to make up for the time she had lost during maternity leave and was surprised to see that she had caught up on OR hours quickly. "3rd year of residency and I'm not behind on my OR time. Not too bad considering I just had a baby." She giggled when she looked at the reported hours on one of the forms she had to submit for her oral boards at the end of residency.  
"I can't believe we made it so far." Alex agreed "Thought I'd be"  
"fired by now. Yeah, I'm surprised you aren't." Cristina interrupted him "Thought you'd be the first they cut."  
"Thank you Yang." Alex shrugged and put on his lab coat.  
"You're welcome. Owen said that there's a second round of layoffs now that they were able to access our surgical skill."  
"Great way to start the year." Meredith sighed "Where's Izzie?"  
"She said she had some things to take care of." Alex looked at Lexie who had left with Alex.  
"Loud things." Lexie added "Sounds like she's making a porn movie again."  
Alex rolled his eyes. "Don't judge. I think it's hot."  
"That you don't have sex?" George teased him.  
"Who told you?" Alex looked shocked. After seeing Izzie and George in the locker room he had thought that Izzie had stopped talking to George, but he realized that he was wrong.  
"She did, Alex and I didn't ask her. It's bad enough that you gave me syphilis. I don't want to know anything about your sex life." George said truthfully.  
"Alex gave you syphilis?" Lexie asked surprised.  
"Intern year, long story. Nurse." Meredith giggled and susurrated more details into her ear. Lexie looked disgusted for a few seconds and muttered "Ugh."  
"Who's coming to Joes tonight to celebrate the fact that we survived two years in this dump?" Cristina wondered and looked at Meredith, George and Alex.  
"Derek is on call, can't. Have a son to look after" Meredith told them. Being a mother was putting a strain on her already busy schedule.  
"Come on, there's daycare." Lexie tried to persuade her sister  
"I'm not going to leave my son in daycare to go to a bar." Meredith insisted.  
"Why don't we meet at the house? Yang can crash on the couch." Alex suggested and they all nodded. It had been a long while since they had all met at the house and shared a drink after work.

* * *

"I was paged. What happened?" Meredith asked when she walked into the ER bay.  
"Hannah McPhillips, 5, her nanny brought her in this morning, she said she has been complaining about increasing abdominal pain since Friday. ER doc says it's an acute appendicitis and referred her to peds." One of the peds nurses filled her in.  
"We scheduled her for a laparoscopic appendectomy in OR3 in 30 minutes, you are going to do the procedure." Dr. Robbins added.  
Meredith looked at her in surprise. Usually they had a day to prepare for a procedure. "Are you sure?"  
"Don't make me regret this Grey, I hope you are up for this." The blonde surgeon told her and handed over her chart.  
"Sure. Thank you." Meredith nodded "I just go and have a look at the chart before I scrub in. See you in 20 minutes." Meredith looked at the little girl and asked her if it was okay to examine her abdomen again.

* * *

"Izzie, what's the matter?" George wondered. Izzie was crying.  
"Like you care" Izzie dismissed his attempt to look out for her.  
George looked at her "I care about you because I love you, as a friend"  
"You are not a friend, you promised me you'd take care of my premie over night and you allowed her to die." Izzie said standing in front of an empty incubator.  
"Izzie, her heart couldn't handle it, she had abdominal bleeding and …" George tried to explain, but Izzie interrupted him and yelled at her. "I could have saved her… I could have. Dr. Montgomery and I could have saved her. I might have had to go the extra mile like I did with Denny, but I could have saved that girl."  
"There wasn't anything you could have done." George insisted and hugged her.  
"There was a lot I could have done" Izzie said with tears in her eyes "there was…"  
George stroked her hair and tried to comfort her "It's okay, Izzie, we can't save everyone. Even if we wanted, we can't. It's fine."  
During this moment Alex came in and looked at the two surgeons and yelled at George. "What are you doing there, O'Malley?"  
"This is not what it looks like." George said and stepped away from Alex. He had tried to be a friend, but did not intend to get in the middle of Alex's and Izzie's relationship.  
"It looks like you are trying to make out with my girlfriend." Alex shouted and looked at Izzie with mad eyes.  
"I am not" George tried to defend himself, but Alex's fist hit him hard.  
Meredith who had heard the noise walked in and pulled Alex away from George "Alex, come on, I can't believe you!" while George left the room in a hurry.

* * *

"Are you Hannah's nanny?" Meredith asked as she approached a black haired woman in the waiting room.  
"Yes" the concerned looking young woman answered.  
"We are going to take her to surgery now and remove her appendix. How long has she been complaining about those pains?" Meredith continued to ask a few routine questions to confirm what the child had told them.  
"She told me she had a tummy ache when I left on Friday, her father was on a fishing trip and her mother seemed busy talking on the phone to some over sea clients. Hannah said she told her multiple times. When I came back this morning I just had to take her to the hospital."  
Meredith nodded at wrote down the answer "This started Friday. Do you know any allergies?"  
"Penicillin."  
"Thank you. I have to go now and do the preops" Meredith smiled.

When she entered the scrub room Meredith noticed a nervous growl in her stomach. Performing surgery on a child was always tricky. "Are you sure we can do this laparoscopic?" she asked Dr. Robbins while they washed their hands "The nanny said she has been complaining about this pain since Friday. It might be too enflamed"  
Arizona smiled and took a deep breath "Dr. Grey, we can still choose to do it the traditional way if I decide that the infection is too advanced." She knew the patient would be fine.  
"Alright, I was just worried about the girl. She was in so much pain." Meredith bit her lips. Being a mom had changed her.  
"She's going to be fine. You can do this. If there are too many adhesions or any other reason to open her up, you can do this, but right now I think it's the best course of action. Let's go."

Derek had the pleasure of working with Dr. Adamson today. "Looking forward to working with you, Dr. Adamson" he greeted her before rounds.  
Reed rolled her eyes. Spending her day with the guy her roommate was talking about 24/7 wasn't too high on her list of priorities and she knew she was not interested in neuro surgery. "Yeah, can't get enough of neuro. Yeah!"  
"You better be more optimistic and professional once we go into the room to see the patient." Derek suggested friendly.  
"Sure, sorry, bad day." Reed apologized.  
"You seem to have a lot of those since the merger." Derek answered in a more serious tone. Reed's mood had affected her evaluation.  
"Yeah, my best friend has a crush on her boss, I have to share my OR time with 20 people instead of 8, the old nursing staff is extremely hostile towards us Mercy Westers and instead of walking to the hospital, it's a 30 minute drive now. Want me to continue?" Reed told him.  
"No, but we are going to see the patient now."

"Why do people do this? Have children and leave them with a nanny, don't pay attention if they complain about pain all weekend?" Meredith wondered while holding the instruments and looking at the screen.  
"What are you talking about?" Arizona wondered.  
"It's horrible. These people are horrible. She's here with her nanny and has been complaining about pain all weekend and her mother didn't listen because she was too busy with her career and doesn't give any crap about her daughter's health. She must have been running a fever the whole weekend and she's too busy to notice." Meredith said thinking about what the girl and the nanny had told her.  
"Dr. Grey, why don't you calm down?" Arizona asked her "You placed all the trocars and we rotated the patient left side down while maintain the Trendelenburg position. Why?"  
"Yes, Dr. Grey, why don't you do that?" Dr. Bailey who was overseeing the procedure as well asked her.  
Meredith held her breath a second and answered "This position allow for the small bowel to retract away from the operating field because of gravity."  
"Yes, how do you proceed?" Arizona tried to push her.  
"I place two atraumatic graspers through the 5mm trocars to assist the gravitional pull."  
"Fine, go ahead" Arizona nodded and observed Meredith while she completed the steps "Do you visualize the appendix?"  
"Yes."  
"Now we get to the tricky part. Use the graspers to cluth the tip of the appendix through the suprapubic port while holding it up and out toward the left upper quadrant." Bailey explained and looked at her student.  
"Done it. Visualization of the mesoappendix and the appendiceal base is good. I'm going to divide the mesoappendix now." Meredith said looking at the screen. Meredith completed the rest of the procedure without any major flaws and Arizona asked an intern to do the few stitches that needed to be done.

* * *

"We didn't do anything" Izzie told Alex.  
"Who are you having sex with?" Alex wondered "Because after everything I saw today, I keep wondering."  
"It's not what you are thinking." Izzie tried to explain, but Alex didn't want to be lied to any longer. "What is it?"  
"I don't know, Alex!" Izzie yelled "All I know is that I feel nothing like the person I was a few months ago. I changed and it feels like I can do everything!"  
"How long have you been sleeping with O'Malley?" Alex got more furious as their conversation progressed. He had to hold back his anger.  
" I'm not having sex with George. I had and it ended badly, more than a year ago. Don't be ridiculous!"  
"I'm not ridiculous! I love you and I don't have a clue what's going on here! Why do you keep doing this to me?" he asked and left the room. He needed to know the answer, but was not ready to hear it.

* * *

"You are my daughter's doctor, aren't you?" a middle aged woman in a business outfit approached Meredith quickly. She was holding her mobile phone in her hand and looked at her.  
"Yes, Ms. McPhillips." Meredith nodded.  
"I'm sorry for how I reacted. I was just so caught up in my work. When they are small you spend every waking moment with them and then they grow up and you get caught up in your job trying to build a career for yourself and don't even notice that the nanny you are paying to look after your child isn't doing her job. I fired her immediately after getting here." The mother told her. For a moment Meredith had identified with her, but when she critized the nanny Meredith was on the verge of losing it.  
"Your daughter had an inflamed appendix, she ran a fever and was complaining about abdominal pain for three days while you were with her." Meredith ranted.  
"Well, she is complaining about so many things." The woman complained "I can't take her to the doctor every time she has an itch. She has to toughen up."  
"No, she doesn't. She needs someone who gives her a hug and protects her." Meredith insisted "She needs someone who takes her to a doctor when she's in pain. She needs someone that listens to her."  
"Doctor Grey, what do you think you are doing here?" Arizona interrupted her and apologized to the patient's mother "I'm sorry for that. I can assure you that your daughter is fine."

"What do you see Dr. Adamson?" Derek tried to teach after he had exposed the spinal tumor.  
"A huge tumor. My god, it's wrapped itself around almost every major blood vessel." Reed said and her eyes were sparkling. It was a beautiful tumor "Can you operate? He has a kid. He can't die like this and according to the file he's complaining about headaches for years now."  
"I'm afraid he went to the hospital too late. We have to close him up." Derek told her "This didn't look as extensive on the scans. Doing any sort of surgery is like a Hail Mary Pass."  
"Poor boy. Are you sure you can't operate?" Reed wondered.  
"I don't see how it could be done surgically, I'm going to call oncology for a consult now, but I think it's too late." Derek said having a look at the tumor from another angle, but drawing the same conclusion.  
"I thought you were the Staubach kind." Reed said and looked at him. He was surprised that she just used a football reference, but it didn't change a thing about his conclusion. There was nothing that could be done. "There are times we can help by cutting and there are times we can't. It's important to know the difference. You like football?  
"My brothers and my dad used to take me to matches. Tailgating before the match is one of my favorite childhood memories." Reed said. She was surprised that she was sharing this with a total stranger during surgery. April did not know about this and she was her best friend and roommate.  
"Why don't you go to matches anymore? You've been here on super ball Sunday." Derek wondered.  
"My brother died in a car crash when I was 10, my parents never really got over it and divorced. He married his intern. It wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the same without my brother and my dad" Reed said and looked at the tumor for one last time.  
"My dad used to take me to baseball matches." Derek told her "I feel closer to him when I go. And it's not Meredith's fault I married her and it's not her fault that your dad left your mom to marry his intern. I noticed you don't like her or any resident for that matter. But it's good to have allies round here."  
"I have April, George, Percy and Jackson."  
"It never hurts to have backups. Right now you are burning bridges. "

* * *

Derek saw Meredith and Christopher in the cafeteria. Christopher was being fed by Cristina and Alex was sitting close by with Maria. "How was your day so far?  
"I operated on a girl was complaining about abdominal pain since Friday. When she was admitted she ran a fever and we had to get her into an OR for an appendectomy. Robbins let me do it. It was cool, but I couldn't help but wonder why anyone would be so caught up in whatever they are doing that they don't notice that their 5 year old child is in a lot of pain. If the nanny hadn't brought her here, she could have died." Meredith told him while chewing on her baguette.  
"Don't let it get to you." Derek said knowing that Meredith hated parents that didn't look after their kid.  
"Well, the mother complained to me that I was interrupting her conference call to Tokyo when I informed her about Hannah's surgery." Meredith told him. The mother reminded him of Ellis.  
"She was there nonetheless." Derek tried to provide comfort.  
"Yeah, but she was annoyed and blaming her daughter." Meredith stuck to her point.  
"Some parents suck." Alex nodded.  
"What are you doing with her?" Derek wondered.  
"Montgomery told me to take care of Maria while she's in surgery. She needs her bottle and I get to scrub in on her next premie case." Alex laughed.  
"That sounds like Addison." Derek nodded and excused himself "I'm going to do some paper work, have fun."  
"Izzie won't like that." Meredith said and looked at Alex. While she had no clue what was going on between them, she knew she needed to find out.  
"Screw her. I try to take care of her, make things up to her and all she does is bitch and moan. A week ago everything was fine. She talks when nobody is in the room and I don't know. During lunch she screamed at me because I bought her a muffin. I deserve better than that. I thought I loved her and maybe I did, but I don't like the 'I'm back from L.A. because of you' version of her. Her behavior has been so erratic." Alex spat out.  
"What happened Alex? Between you and Izzie?" Meredith asked again.  
"I don't know. It feels like I still love her, but it's like nothing I do is ever good enough and at the same time I'm glad she is leaving. I won't put up with her much longer. She masturbates when I'm not in the room and it feels like she's talking to a ghost." Alex said and looked at Maria who calmed him down.  
"A ghost?" Meredith's eyes widened in disbelief.  
"Yeah, she's talking and there's nobody in the room."  
"Run her blood in the lab and let them check for markers. Derek had a case like this. Page me." Meredith said and kept looking at Alex who seemed confused, but after a minute he finally came up with a question. "You think she has a brain tumor?"  
"I don't know. Maybe somewhere else. Just run her blood."Meredith said. It was one of the few organic conclusions that actually made sense. Sudden chances in behavior hardly ever had psychological causes and if Izzie had undergone a trauma they'd know.  
"How do you go from there to here?" Alex asked "Christopher and Maria are so peaceful, they have loving parents and not a worry in the world and then they grow up and everything gets more screwed up and more complicated."  
"and when you find the right person, the right friends or the right job it gets better."  
"Happy Mer is scary." Alex laughed.  
"I'm just leaning into the fear to get a happy ending." Meredith told him with a smile on her face  
"I don't even know what that means." He said and got up to continue working.

After she had dropped off Christopher at daycare again, she ran into Addison . "Do you have a minute?"  
"Sure, what's the matter?" the neonatal surgeon wondered. It had been a while since they had talked for the last time "Need parenting advice?"  
"No, it's about Izzie Stevens. Alex and I were wondering what's going on because she's sort of acting weird. Did you notice that too?" Meredith looked at Addison.  
"She seemed normal during surgery." Addison said, but as she kept thinking about it, she noticed something "Well, last week she kept starring at the gallery."  
"In OR 2?" Meredith asked  
"Yes, why?" Addison wondered. She was confused as to why OR 2 would have some significance in Izzie's life.  
"Nevermind." Meredith said even though she knew that OR 2 had been the OR Denny had surgery in "How's Maria?"  
"Growing. She's cheeky and stubborn, but charming at the same time. Kind of like Mark. I heard Derek wasn't too happy that we are talking." Addison laughed.  
"He isn't, he has a lot of girl issues." Meredith giggled "But I guess everyone that grow up with four sisters has. Compliments my daddy and mommy issues perfectly."  
"You have daddy issues?" Addison wondered.  
"More than plenty." Meredith sighed, but she was surprised about Addison's revelation. It never occurred to her that a confident woman like Addison could have a troubled family history. "My dad never made an effort to see me after the age of 5. What's your excuse?"  
"My dad slept every woman who was walking within a ten feet radius cheating on my mom." Addison challenged her, but Meredith giggled before she noticed her pager. "My mother took care of the cheating bit. Anyway, I have to go."

The rest of the day passed by quickly. Meredith was ready to go home when Cristina walked in with her scrubs covered in blood and wondered"How was your day?"  
"Got yelled at by Robbins after I lashed out on a patient but got to do a laparoscopic appendectomy on my own and saw Christopher during lunch. But you already know that. How about you?"  
"Got to scrub in on an EMT with Dr. Hunt. There was blood everywhere and I love trauma. It's so hectic. The rush is, I don't know. I live for it." Cristina said and put her scrub top into the laundry bag.  
"I'm sure your patients enjoy it as much as you do." Meredith said.  
"He certainly did until there was a complication from a hypoperfusion and he …" Cristina said a little disappointed  
"is braindead?" Meredith suggested. She knew brain death was a common side effect.  
"Well, they better do, I kickass in that OR." Cristina nodded "Anoxic brain death occurs in 50% of the survivors. Webber and Lexie are doing the harvest once we declared him."  
"Alex and I think that Izzie has a brain tumor." Meredith said when she had put all her personal items into her purse.  
"Are you for real?" Cristina's eyes widened. "Is this some sort of zebra hunt?"  
"We have reason to believe so. She's been acting weird" Meredith tried to explain.  
"It's Izzie. She has always been acting kind of weird."  
"Alex is going to run the tests and will talk to her if she tests positive for some tumor markers." Meredith said and left to pick up Christopher from daycare.

* * *

Meredith and Cristina sat in the living room ready the 'Journal of Medicine' when Alex walked in with a lab envelope. "You brought her results home?"  
"Yes, I have Izzie's result."  
"Spill it. Mer told me everything." Cristina demanded "How did you get Izzie to draw blood and sign the consent form without actually telling her what's up? What did you tell her?"  
"That she had been exposed to a contagious patient and we need to take her blood to see if she was infected." Alex laughed. He could not believe that she had bought that.  
"So what does it say?" Meredith wondered as Alex handed over the results saying "Just look at her TA-90 and S-100 level."  
"She has skin cancer, it is metastatic and quite progressed. You need to tell her" Cristina told him and he nodded silently "I need to tell her."  
"Should we consult someone from oncology?" Meredith wondered even though she knew it was a bad idea.  
"And tell them we ran a test on one of her colleagues without telling her why?" Cristina teased her for making the suggestion. Meredith nodded agreeing with Cristina "You have a point. But we have to talk to her."

"How are my two favorite people in the world?" Derek walked into the kitchen with a huge smile on her face as he saw that Christopher was sitting up in his chair holding a bottle.  
"I'm good, but Chris is a little cranky tonight. He's running a fever and I'll have to monitor if it goes up." Meredith replied.  
"I can help you!" Derek suggested, but Meredith insisted that she would do it as Derek came home from a night on call.  
"It's fine, I can take care of Chris" she smiled.  
"But you don't have to do it alone." Derek told her and kissed her neck.  
"You could get us something to eat." Meredith suggested as Derek worked his way up kissing her neck.  
"Or we could have dessert first." He whispered seductively.  
"I think I like desert." Meredith giggled and turned around to kiss Derek.  
"So what do you want ice cream, pudding, tiramisu or…" Derek asked and smirked.  
"Shut up and kiss me. We have a very small window of opportunity." Meredith told him and looked at the door. Christopher was occupied and Lexie would be back from her shower in a minute.  
"I can be quick." Derek smiled and lifted her up to the kitchen counter.  
"I know." Meredith said as she ran her fingers through his hair while he opened her trousers.  
" very quick." He smiled while they entered the utility room adjacent to the kitchen; but Christopher's cry interrupted them. "Apparently not quick enough…" Derek sighed.

* * *

"That's odd." Meredith said when she walked into Alex's bedroom holding Christopher in her arms the next morning "Izzie didn't come home last night. Where is Izzie?" She saw an half empty closet with only Alex clothes in there.  
"She left. She came home in the middle of the night, packed her things and left. She left a letter saying I'm crazy and she left and went back to L.A." Alex sighed and showed her the envelope. It was the second time Izzie had left without a good bye.  
"But you told her about the results?" Meredith wondered and sat down next to Alex.  
"First thing I did." He looked at her and handed over her phone "I wrote her a text message."  
"You will be fine." Meredith told him. She knew he was miserable.  
"I deserve better. She just stormed out and didn't even give me the benefit of a doubt. But I'm glad she was back because I know that I deserve better than this now. She gave me a letter for you, too. She said it explains everything that you need to know." He swallowed and tears were running down his face. He had fought and she had still decided to leave him.  
"So she was planning to leave?" Meredith bit her lower lip looking at the mess in Alex's room.  
"Looks like it." Alex said.  
"I'm sorry Alex." Meredith stated and they both remained silent for a little while.  
"Can I hold Christopher for a while? Holding him always makes me feel better." Alex wondered and Meredith handed him over to Alex.  
"Sure, I'm going to sterilize his bottles and heat up some of the leftovers. Want some?" Meredith wondered.  
"Sure, I'm starving." Alex exclaimed "Where is Derek?"  
"He has an emergency craniotomy and I guess he's going to be stuck inside the OR for another 4 hours if the patient survives. So it's just you, Christopher and me." Meredith said walking into the kitchen.  
"Where's Lexie?" Alex wondered. The house was really quiet.  
" She's celebrating the fact that she passed her intern exam with the other interns." Meredith told him.  
"Good for her." Alex said "They could have invited us. I could have used a drink"  
"We were their bosses. We wouldn't have invited Bailey." Meredith reminded him.  
"You did. Or Izzie did or whatever." Alex insisted. Bailey had been at the party at their house everyone at the hospital had been invited to but him.  
"Hell, I forgot about that." Meredith laughed. "How do you remember?"  
"I was the only person that wasn't invited."  
"Yeah, almost forgot about that party and the fact that you were a stupid frat boy who gave everyone syphilis and we hated you."  
"He fell asleep." Alex noted "Is it okay if I put him to bed?"  
"Yeah, you can do it. Don't leave any toys in there, he usually wakes up in the middle of the night and screams if you leave them in there and put on the blue light. He likes the blue light." Meredith told Alex. She knew his good night ritual off by heart. When she noticed how she was telling Alex exactly what to do she paused and giggled. "Oh my god, I'm turning into that mom. I can't believe it."


	9. Chapter 7

_Sorry I've been taking so long, but this chapter has been a pain ... to write... I still don't quite like it, but it gets me through to the next chapter... thanks for the reviews... as a lot of questions you adressed are going to be answered in the next few chapters I'm not going to answer them right now. I hope you keep enjoying the story and I'm trying to update sooner next time._

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

Meredith sat on the bed in her room and was reading a few articles in the latest issue of the journal of neuroscience. Research in this area was new fresh and developing quickly in the last few years. Izzie had been gone for two weeks, but Meredith kept worrying about her and Alex had drowned himself in work. Reading an article about brain mapping and the way brain cells connected themselves to each other got Meredith thinking what had been going on in Izzie's head since she had left Seattle. She hadn't answered one call, hadn't replied to a single text message, the only thing she knew was that Izzie had returned to her hospital in Los Angeles. She looked at a photo of all of them at the end of their first Thanksgiving dinner and couldn't help but wonder what had happened to their friendship ever since that day. She hadn't told them that Derek was her husband until they caught him sneaking out of the house , Izzie had not told her that she was sleeping with George, everything had changed. She was holding on to a memory of a version of their friendship that no longer existed.

"Mom was asking whether we want to christen Christopher." Derek said when he sat down next to her. Meredith looked up from her journal. She was fairly surprised.  
"I'm not religious. I didn't know you are." She said.  
Derek took her hand and looked her in the eyes "I didn't say that, but everyone in my family is catholic." He started to explain, but Meredith interrupted him wondering "Don't you think it's a little… fake… I don't believe in god. With everything I see at work every day, I can't. Because if there was a god why would he allow all of this tragedy to happen. I don't think I want my son to grow up believing that there is someone who judges you and the whole purgatory and hell thing, I just don't like it."  
"You have a very limited view of the catholic church." Derek sighed.  
"Do you want to raise Christopher in this religion? Because if you don't, I can't and I won't." Meredith said with a firm voice. If he wanted to bring religion into Christopher's life, it would be his job. "They condone gay marriage and they condone the usage of contraceptives "  
"Mom is going to be disappointed." Derek said.  
"She'll understand that we choose to raise our children in a belief system that is compatible with both our views."  
"How can you be surgeon if you think like this? I couldn't because it would eat me alive. All this injustice, I have to believe that everything is part of a bigger plan." Derek said.  
"I believe that you ultimately get what you deserve. Call it karma, call it the universe, call it whatever. I can't believe in god."  
"I have to believe that there's some place we go to after we die." Derek said "where we see the people we love again."  
Meredith had been highly influenced by Ellis's belief in science all her life. She had never attended a Christmas mass or a Church service: "It's over. We cease to exist. All this Christ's second coming and Judgement day and salvation stuff is bullshit. I'm sorry, but I can't believe in it."  
"Don't you think it's a nice idea that your good behavior on earth is rewarded? Thatcher said you were baptized. You are protestant." Derek reminded her. After his father's death Sunday mass had been one of the few things they did as a family.  
"My mother believed in science." Meredith said.  
"And so do you." Derek concluded.  
Meredith nodded "and so do I. I was raised to believe in science. But I'd be fine if you share your religion with him, even though we are married for over a year now and you never even mentioned that you are religious, this seems to be important for you."  
Derek kissed her forehead and went to the en suite bathroom brushing his teeth "You don't have to parade around your religion like doctor Kepner is doing, but you can still appreciate that you were raised in the tradition of your church."  
"Do you want to baptize our child? It'd be your call."  
"I want to raise our child with our beliefs. Do you think that altruistic love is something you could teach our child? "God is love."—1 John 4:8"  
"Are you quoting the bible?" Meredith laughed and shook her head.  
"I am. I believe in the seven heavenly virtues. Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. Do you think we can raise our son according to those? To thrive for all of those and I think he'd be a remarkable human being."  
Meredith nodded and closed her journal to turn off the lights and go to sleep saying "I'll think about it. But I think it's better to wait until Christopher is old enough to decide for himself."

* * *

It was the first day as 3rd year residents when they all heard rumors about another round of layoffs following the Seattle Grace Mercy West merger. Everyone was nervous and they had gathered around the coffee table in Meredith's house.  
"I'm safe. I just had a baby and I'm the wife of a department head. The board members loved me." Meredith joked, but thinking back to the charity ball it might actually be true.  
"Anyway, I heard they judged us by our surgical skills, so I'm safe anyway." Cristina said confidently.  
"You are so full of yourself Yang." Alex rolled his eyes and drank a bit of water from the tap.  
"And you better pray to higher powers, Evil Spawn." Cristina said and neither of them could tell whether she was joking or not.  
Derek came in and wondered "Why are all the residents gathered in my kitchen?" as it had been a while since he had seen everyone in the kitchen and most of them seemed frightened.  
"There's a second round of layoffs after the merger and HR is sending emails out today." George explained.  
"Well you are safe." Derek said "They fired Percy and Reed, a few second year residents and the intern group was reduced to 15 for the following year. But you are safe."  
"How do you know?" Lexie wondered.  
"Well, as a department head the Chief informs me about important staff decisions. The savings are used to create three new fellow positions."  
"Kepner gets to stay? She is such a tard." Alex exclaimed.  
"She had a nose job and a bad one." Lexie added.  
"Don't be surprised about Virgin Mary, Alex. You get to stay too." Cristina laughed.  
"Shut up, Yang."  
"This calls for a party."George said  
"Yeah, It'll be another day until we are fired." Lexie muttered and grabbed her car keys.  
"I can't go, we have a baby and I don't want to be drunk while taking care of him." Meredith declined.  
"You won't touch a bottle of tequila for the rest of your life?" Cristina wondered.  
"I can take care of Christopher tonight." Derek suggested. He knew that Meredith needed to spend time with her friends.  
"You are on call." Meredith reminded him. She hated to leave Christopher in daycare over night, but Derek insisted. "The daycare at the hospital is opened 24h. If they page me, I'll leave him in the competent hands of Karen or Susan or Ellen."  
"I don't want to be that mother." Meredith said, but Derek kissed her and said "You haven't been out in a year. Go and have some fun!"  
George laughed "It's not like you are going out on his birthday and he doesn't get to have a party because you are getting drunk! We are young!"  
"Yeah, come on, Joe is missing you and I need something to forget about my cancerous relationship with Izzie." Alex encouraged her and she finally agreed to go.  
Meredith nodded "Fine. One tequila."

* * *

"Meredith, last night got me thinking…" Derek said and paused.  
"Thinking that your pagan wife is immature and downs tequila like water?" Meredith laughed. Her head hurt and she was sleep deprived after they had been to Joe's bar until 1.00 am.  
He laughed and continued "No, but we haven't been out since Christopher was born. I want to change that."  
"I'm a little hung over and I have to work. How is Christopher?" She said walking into the locker room.  
"I guess he's sound asleep at daycare. Had to take him with me when I was paged last night." Derek told her.  
"I feel like a bad mom." Meredith admitted.  
"Well don't. I told Hunt about our date night and he volunteered to babysit."  
"Do you think he can do it?"  
"He's a trauma surgeon and he's been to a war zone, I'm sure he can handle a baby."  
"Is Cristina okay with this?" Meredith wondered. Other than Lexie and Izzie, Cristina had never volunteered to babysit.  
"What has Yang to do with this?" Derek wondered.  
Meredith rolled her eyes. McDreamy was oblivious to hospital gossip it seemed. "Cristina and Dr. Hunt are dating, well sort of, kind of. Normal people would consider it to be a relationship. I have to go now, Dr. Robbins wants me to do another appendectomy today."  
"Have fun."

"Why is your husband asking my boyfriend to babysit your child?" Cristina grabbed Meredith and pulled her into a stairway. If it had been anyone but Cristina Meredith would have been intimidated, but Meredith knew Cristina just needed to get this off her chest.  
"Your boyfriend volunteered to do it and for the record Derek didn't know you are dating." Meredith tried to shed light on the situation.  
"Don't you ever talk?" Cristina laughed.  
"We talk about our baby and our patients. We don't gossip about who is sleeping with who at our place of work. So I take you and Hunt are not going on a date on Friday." Meredith asked.  
"No, not in a million years am I going to babysit. A baby is like a dog that slowly learns how to speak."  
Meredith sighed. "Anyway I will suggest to Owen that you would very much like to help him on Friday if you keep talking about my son like this."  
"Don't you dare!" Cristina threatened her.  
"I'm walking away! I'm smiling, waving and walking away! Good bye Cristina!" Meredith laughed and walked away.

* * *

While Meredith and Cristina discussed the Friday babysitting arrangement, April and Jackson discussed the proposed layoffs in the locker room. "Did you get an email because I didn't. That means I'm safe, doesn't it?" April asked Jackson nervously.  
"I don't know, April. I didn't get anything either." Jackson answered.  
April's phone went off and she read a text message"Charles got cut. I don't get it. Why would they keep all the Seattle Grace residents and cut all of us?"  
"George is one of us too" Jackson told her "and we don't know if we got cut."  
"Is he?" April wondered. Ever since the merger he hardly hung out with them.  
"Want to have a drink after work?" Jackson asked when Reid walked in.  
"Sure. I need a lot to forget I was fired" she answered and sat down.  
Charles came in and punched his cupboard. "I hate this merger." He sat down next to Reid and hugged her. Tears were running down her face.  
"Relax guys. You'll find a new residency."Jackson tried to cheer them up.  
"We are not called Avery or Grey. It ain't as easy for us as it is for you. They told me to find a new job if I don't want to work at the morgue." Reid spat out.  
"Are you going to move out?" April wondered as she would have to look for another room made.  
"I guess. Unless they build a new hospital in Seattle where I can work."  
"I'm sorry, but I'm sure you'll find something. I could ask…" Jackson tried to suggest, but Reid didn't want that.  
"Don't, I don't want a job because some Avery called in a favor."

* * *

"I'm sorry about your friends, Dr. Kepner. I tried to make Richard keep all of you and make cuts somewhere else, but .." Derek said when they were scrubbing in.  
"I'm sure you did your best." April made sheep's eyes at him  
"You have a lot of faith in people." He said amused.  
"I'm a Christian. I believe in love, chastity and all of this. I believe in the good in people, that god is in everyone." April said. "It's what keeps me going every day."  
"What would you do if your partner did not agree with this?" Derek wondered thinking about his conversation with Meredith.  
"I don't know. I … I never had to think about that. I guess I just wouldn't have a partner that wasn't religious." April said and put on her gloves.  
"I see." Derek nodded "Could you live with someone you don't see eye to eye with?"  
April smiled "If I love this person enough I guess I could."  
"Thank you for this talk… it's a beautiful day to save lives!"

"I found god when I was volunteering at an African orphanage when I was 16. I was religious before that, but it wasn't until than that I really saw him and it's…" April began to share her life story with him.  
"I'm kind of in the middle of something very tricky here, can you please be quiet for a minute?" Derek interrupted him  
"Sure Dr. Shepherd, anything you want."

* * *

"Don't pick up the phone Meredith, Christopher is fine. They'd call if the need help"  
"It's just that…"  
"you don't trust your best friend and the head of the trauma department with our son." Derek teased her.  
"We never left him, he was either with you or with me - or at daycare." Meredith tried to persuade Derek that calling Owen und Cristina to check on Christopher. But he kept pushing the hand down that held the phone and looked in her eyes until she rolled her eyes and pouted "Alright, I hate you right now."  
"I'm sure he's sound asleep. Just enjoy the steak and the basket full of carbs." Derek told her. "We are not going to talk about our child or work today."  
"Does work include gossip about the people we work with?"  
"When did you become a gossip, Meredith?"  
"I'm not, just wanted to check." Meredith giggled. Derek gave her a little box that was wrapped nicely in lavender wrapping paper. She looked puzzled because it was neither her birthday, nor Christmas nor an anniversary. When she unwrapped it carefully she found a little house in it. It was a tiny model of the house Derek was building for them.  
"The contractor told me that the house is finished. The decorator said the furniture is going to arrive in two weeks." Derek smiled. He was looking forward to the day that they were finally going to be able to live on their own.  
"You hired a decorator. How much do you make Derek?" Meredith wondered. She knew how much her mother had made and she wondered if Richard had made Derek a similar offer when he tried to persuade him to come to Seattle.  
"Enough" Derek said and took a sip of his wine.  
"Come on, I'm your wife. I will find out when we are doing our taxes." Meredith tried to push him.  
"Our accountant is doing our taxes."  
"We have an accountant?"  
"I have an accountant. I'm surprised you don't have one." Derek smirked.  
"My mother had one and he did my taxes too until she died and it seems like you took care of my taxes this year." Meredith said wondering how he managed to get all the necessary information.  
"You never noticed?" Derek laughed. He had scanned their entire room and tons of boxes for all the necessary documents and the contact details of her accountant.  
"In my defense, I had a lot going on with you, the pregnancy, my work." Meredith said in a challenging tone.  
"Are you mad?"  
"No, I'm just surprised. I mean this means that you know everything about my mother's estates, her money, my trust fund, everything and you never told me." She admitted and reached over to the bread basket.  
"Well, I could tell you about the Brownstone and the house in the Hamptons which Addison and I owned before we got divorce, but we sold that, just like my private practice and people might say that I'm a good catch." Derek chuckled.  
"You never made me sign a prenup. That's a really stupid thing to do." Meredith laughed "But as you know about my mom's money, you might thing I'm stupid myself"  
"We got married in Vegas. That's a really stupid thing" Derek laughed.  
"I guess it is. Getting married on an impulse always is."  
"But sometimes the most stupid thing you did can turn out to be the best thing you did." Derek said and for a second everything around them disappeared, their eyes locked and it felt like the very first moment Derek had spotted her in Vegas. Her smiled was captivating and he couldn't stop himself from looking at her.  
"Are you not going to eat your steak? It's getting cold if you keep on talking this sappy crap." Meredith teased him and cut her own medium rare steak.  
"I mean it. It's till death do us part. We don't need a prenup." Derek told her bringing up the topic they had discussed before. Now it was Meredith who froze for a second and just kept looking at him. In all their time as a couple they had never discussed money and it seemed like Meredith was trying to process everything right now. She kept looking at him and he joked "Well, maybe you should eat your steak too."

"That was a good steak." Derek smirked because Meredith still looked puzzled.  
"I can't believe we spent the entire evening without being covered in puke or feces or being interrupted by screams." Meredith stated taking the last bite of her steak.  
"Having a child sounds very disgusting if you are looking at it that way." Derek laughed.  
"Guess that's what's freaking out Cristina about, we better go and pick up Christopher before she kills Owen." Meredith said. She knew that Cristina had been very reluctant to join Owen tonight.  
"Do you think so?"  
"Well, she wouldn't kill Christopher because she knows I would kill her if she did." Meredith giggled.  
"It's incredibly sexy if you threaten to kill people." Derek smirked.  
"So when am I going to see the finished house?" Meredith wondered. She was curious to find out when they'd finally get time to themselves. Living in her mom's house had put a strain on her sex life. They had been interrupted countless times since Christopher was born.  
"Are you going to threaten to kill me if I don't tell you?" Derek smiled  
"I might." Meredith laughed and looked at the dessert menu.  
"Well in that case I can tell you that we can move in in two weeks." Derek told her.  
Meredith looked very surprised. "You are kidding me. Do you know how much stuff we have to pack?"  
"Our clothes and whatever you want to take with you in terms of memorabilia. The kitchen is equipped because I thought your friends wouldn't want to buy new pans and pots or coffee machines or microwaves or whatever."  
"So I only have to pack up my clothes?" Meredith wondered.  
"Yes, and a few things from the nursery."

After they had finished dessert Meredith took of her heels and one of her feet moved up to Derek's lap suggesting "I know something we could do tonight."  
"I think I know what you mean" Derek said seductively.  
"We could do it here." Meredith suggested "The service was terrible, I don't think there's a chance we are going to be back anytime soon."  
"Public toilet sex?" Derek laughed.  
"Restaurant toilet sex." Meredith corrected him. They could do the bendy thing they used to do in the shower of Derek's trailer.  
"You wouldn't do that." Derek dared her.  
"I haven't had sex in a long while, Derek. I don't want to wait any longer, please." Meredith begged him. It was an impulse she was willing to give in to any minute.  
"I know why I married you." He laughed and took her hand. "Let's go."  
'beep beep' the sound of Derek's pager interrupted them before they managed to get away from the table. It felt like they had been cursed, Meredith thought.  
"Damn, the universe hates us and wants me to die sexually frustrated." She sighed.


	10. Chapter 8

_Thank you for the reviews! My husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a trip to a day spa yesterday, so my weekly update is a little late. Sorry for that! This is a bit of a transitioning chapter before big things can happen in the next few chapters.  
I'm really bad with finishing the pre written chapters lately. I finished most of the dialogue for the next 35 chapters, but every time I try to brush them up a little in order to be publishable I go back and write something new that is going to happen later. So maybe once I'm completely finished with writing new stuff, you get the older chapters in shorter intervals. _

_Sara: Thank you! Yeah, season 6 is going to be a very exciting time for Meredith and Derek. It won't be long until they move!_  
 _Charlene: More on Izzie to come and more on Meredith and Derek's itch too._  
 _Carolyn: Won't be long! Yes, they are still learning a lot about each other – just like you will._  
 _Susan: Sounds like a lovely trip. I hope you had fun! Addison and Mark are still trying to figure out how to juggle their careers and living with Maria, but there's going to be more on them later on too. Thank you! I'm glad you like the story._  
 _Kiley: They are going to move soon, don't worry!_  
 _Melanie: Here it is! I promise I'll try to get them to you more quickly._  
 _Darlene: Glad you like the story!_  
 _Patsy: Thank you for your review. I'll explain why Meredith is hesitant to christen Christopher soon._

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

Derek had just come home after having performed the emergency craniotomy he had been paged to after dinner when Meredith looked up to him. Christopher had slept for about fifteen minutes and she had just turned off the lights minutes before he arrived. They were both tired and ready to fall asleep, but Derek wanted to get something off his chest. "About the Christening…." Derek tried to tell Meredith that he was fine waiting until she was comfortable or until their son was old enough to decide for himself.  
"Derek, I'm sorry, but I don't think christening Christopher is a good idea if I don't believe in what your church stands for. We should wait and let him decide. You can raise him according to your beliefs, you can take him to Church if you want, you can pray, but I want him to decide for himself."  
"I love you Meredith." Derek smiled and ran his fingers through her hair. He kissed her before she replied. "I love you Derek."  
"Christopher is sleeping. We could have sex tonight." He suggested. "But I'm tired"  
"But I'm tired and the baby is sleeping and I only have to be at work at 5pm tomorrow, so I might actually get to sleep a bit tonight." Meredith nodded  
"Yeah, let's sleep." Derek nodded "Are we ever going to have sex again?"  
"Sleep is so much better." Meredith uttered half awake.  
"Yeah, let's sleep. Good night!"  
"Good night!"

* * *

"Derek did our taxes and he wants to baptize Christopher." Meredith hastily told Cristina pulling her inside a supply closet. This had been bugging her ever since they had gone on their date the other night.  
"And that's a problem because?" Cristina looked at her friend who was breathing nervously.  
"Because he knows about all the money I make, he knows about my mom's estates and well I guess that doesn't matter. What kind of bothers me is that he didn't tell me that he took care of that. It's like he thinks I'm a child." Meredith stammered "Like I wouldn't do it on my own. Like he's my knight in shining whatever"  
"And you would have done it on your own?" Cristina wondered. She knew Ellis's accountant would have called her and that he would have taken care of everything last minute because Meredith wouldn't have taken care of her taxes in the middle of a clinical trial, her residency and the pregnancy.  
"Probably not" Meredith admitted and suddenly she remembered that Derek had asked her to sign their tax forms and she hadn't even realized what they were.  
"So why does this bother you so much?" Cristina wondered.  
"I don't know. I just need to freak-out because it's been weeks and we hadn't had sex. That bothers me! But something bothers you too, so what is it?" Meredith wondered.  
"My stupid boyfriend told me he wants to have kids and that's your fault." Cristina said. "You showed him that it's possible."  
"It's my fault he wants to have kids?" Meredith giggled. "Or it's my fault he TOLD you he wants to have kids?"  
"Both" Cristina answered.  
"Why don't you just tell him that you don't want to have kids?" Meredith wondered.  
"I told him about the ectopic pregnancy and what happened, but he drew the wrong conclusions."  
"And that's my fault how?" Meredith looked at Cristina sternly.  
"He would have never started to talk about children if Derek hadn't forced him to babysit your son to go out on a date with you." Cristina said accusingly, but Meredith knew she was kidding and that they both knew that the underlying issue went way deeper that Derek taking up the offer.  
"Just tell him. It's something you have to tell him." Meredith suggested. Honesty worked best in those circumstances.  
"Because it's so unusual that I don't want to have children?" Cristina wondered. Facing the music it was unusual and as Owen and Cristina were at a stage in their relationship were things got more serious.  
"No, but because he's someone that wants to have children and you don't." Meredith said and her eyes rested on Cristina and she waited for a reaction.  
"Well it's not something you discuss over lobster on your first date."  
"It's something you have to discuss." Meredith insisted "It's something you have to discuss. Period. It's something you have to discuss. He deserves to know. It doesn't matter how happy the two of you are right now, he deserves to know."  
"When did you become an expert on adult relationships?" Cristina wondered looking at Meredith who when they had met at the beginning of their intern year had been an expert on one night stands and sneaking out of the house without being noticed. .  
"When I got married and had a baby." Meredith said thinking about all the fights she and Derek had and all the things she had learned.  
"Whatever. So Derek wants to introduce your son to Catholic guilt and purgatory?" Cristina tried to change the topic.  
"Yeah, well, we are discussing it, but I don't really want to because a Christening is nothing you can take back. I want him to decide whether he wants to believe in God." Meredith said.  
"Do you believe in God?" Cristina wondered. Meredith knew that Cristina didn't.  
Meredith giggled and shook her head "No, but I believe that there is a greater power, the universe or something"  
"Good" Cristina nodded.  
"Do you believe in God?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, not since I know better. You go back to peds while I fix real injuries now!" Cristina said and got back up from the floor they had been sitting on while they talked.  
"You are aware that children have real injuries and are real humans?" Meredith laughed.  
"Whatever you and Karev keep telling yourselves to feel better." Cristina replied.

"Grey, good to see you." Meredith heard when she was running down the hallway and saw Dr. Sloan who was waiting in an exam room with Maria and didn't look as calm as he usually was.  
"What's the matter Dr. Sloan? You paged 911. I just ran halfway across the hospital from the pediatric wing to this exam room to find you and Maria in here. So what's the story?" Meredith wondered and looked at Maria who was whimpering  
"You have to examine her. She was crying all night. Addison was on call and she was crying all night." Dr. Sloan explained and having a second look at him Meredith noticed how tired he looked.  
"Is she running a fever?" Meredith wondered and began her check up with Maria. She knew the girl was probably fine.  
"She was, for a while. But she's back to normal." Mark explained.

"How are you, Maria? Is daddy being protective of you?" Meredith cradled the little baby in front of her. She had grown a lot since she last held her, but she looked healthy. Meredith checked her ears, her throat and her nose. "You don't have an ear infection and your throat looks fine and you are a perfectly healthy baby." She handed over Maria to Dr. Sloan and told him "She's fine. She's teething. Christopher is teething too. And looking at her, I can see that she is teething."  
Sloan still looked concerned and checked everything again. "Are you sure we don't need blood tests or a CT?"  
Meredith laughed and tried to calm Dr. Sloan down "She isn't sick, she's just teething. Now listen, you take her home, you wet a washcloth and you put it into the fridge, the fridge, not the freezer. You wait until it is cold and you let her chew on that. If this doesn't work, you rub a clean finger gently but firmly over her sore gum. And don't page me for this crap ever again. I haven't slept all night because Christopher is teething as well, but it's something babies do. So just relax!"  
"Derek is right, you are bossy." Mark laughed and put Maria back into her car seat.  
Meredith rolled her eyes "Shut up, I have to go back and treat children who are sick. So let me work and go back to your bob jobs and liposuctions."  
"Don't tell Addison about this." Mark insisted as Meredith left the room.

Jackson walked up to a red headed resident who was jumping up and down in front of the OR board. "You look excited." He mocked her.  
She turned around and she looked at him. Jackson noticed that April's face lid up „"I'm on Dr. Shepherd's service again. Dr. Shepherd, he's amazing and he loves that I'm religious. We talked. I never talked to anyone the way I talk to him. It's like he knows what I'm thinking."  
„April, he's doing smalltalk" Jackson tried to give her a reality check and calm her back down to normal.  
"I'm sure there is more. He's… he's Derek Shepherd, just look at him." She said and bit her lower lip  
Jackson sighed and grabbed her shoulders. He looked into her brown eyes and she looked into his green eyes "Earth to April, calm down. He's married. He's a father. He has a family. It's not very Christian to break up a marriage. Not you to even think about that. Isn't one of the commandments about this?"  
"I would never… no…" April stuttered.  
Jackson smiled "I know you won't. You are a virgin. I know. It's obvious, really obvious."  
April looked stressed. "I had sex, I had sex at the beach, at sunset."  
"Sure." Jackson laughed and turned around. He knew April good enough to know when she was lying.  
"It was very romantic." April insisted.  
Jackson turned back around and just said "Anyway, let it go, April. Just let it go."

* * *

"You look like crap." Alex said when he walked into the kitchen the next morning.  
Meredith looked at him and grabbed the carafe to offer him a cup of coffee "I'm exhausted. I haven't slept all night because Christopher started teething. Coffee?"  
"Sucks!" Alex said.  
"At least I'm used to it. Nothing prepares you for the sleep deprivation of parenthood the way a surgical internship does." Meredith giggled and poured Alex a mug.  
"Do you think Izzie went for a consult?" He asked when he said down next to her. They both stared at the blank.  
"I hope so." Meredith said "Do you think about her a lot?"  
"No, just when I'm miserable and need something to beat myself up over." Alex joked.  
"Don't." Meredith ordered him.  
"I thought she was the one and now I just question my judgment." Alex admitted.  
This took Meredith by surprise. She had no idea that Alex had felt so strong about Izzie. "Why?"  
"Because how can I be a good surgeon if I'm miserable because a woman left me after I was too scared to face reality for weeks." Alex said.  
"Didn't you sleep with that nurse from peds last night?" Meredith looked at him and he nodded. She rolled her eyes and giggled "You are compensating."  
"So what? Izzie is gone" Alex said.  
"You sleep with random women to forget Izzie, I slept with random guys to forget how much my live sucked and Sloan slept with random women to forget about the fact that he was in love with his best friend's wife. I'm not sleeping with random guys anymore because my life got better after Derek showed up here and Mark, he is a loving dad. He… is scared when Maria runs a fever and he looks out for her and Addison. You are going to find someone and when you do, it's going to fix everything that is wrong with your private life, in time. But while you wait for that person to surface, you can focus on being a kickass surgeon because I know you can do that. If Izzie doesn't consult a doctor, that's on her. There's nothing you can do about it." Meredith tried to pep talk him.  
"Shepherd said you three were moving out."  
"We are. The house is finished soon. You can get a new roommate if you want to, but please, don't burn down the house." Meredith giggled. "and this isn't a brothel and we have to go. We are late."

"Dr. Grey, Dr. Karev, I'm glad you made it." Dr. Robbins said sarcastically when Meredith and Alex arrived at the peds ward 5 minutes late.  
"Sorry, Dr. Robbins. Dr. Sloan paged us for a consult." Meredith lied knowing that Mark would cover for her after he had paged her the day before.  
"Anyway, today we have one important surgery so I need the two of you in the OR acting as stand-ins for each other. This is a rare procedure, so you better pay attention now. I saw you assisted on a heart transplant before, Grey."  
"I did when Dr. Burke was still here." Meredith nodded.  
"It's the same procedure but the heart is a lot smaller." Dr. Robbins said and handed over the charts.  
"How old is the patient?" Alex wondered.  
"8 months – stage D. She hasn't left the NICU ever since she has been born." Meredith said looking at the chart. "It's a miracle she survived."  
"Get familiar with the case." Dr. Robbins said and walked away "When we are finished with the transplant I have another surgery schedule. Karev, read up on pediatric pacemakers."

After spending most of the morning in the library reading about heart transplant everyone met at the cafeteria for lunch. "Do you know what HLHS is?"  
"Hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Why?" Meredith said before taking a bite of her grilled cheese sandwich.  
"Addison is doing a Norwood procedure and I'll scrub in. It's so awesome." George said  
"I'd say lucky bastard, but I'm scrubbing in on a pediatric heart transplant with Dr. Robbins, so …" Meredith said and kept chewing.  
"You get the heart transplant?" George asked surprised. He had thought that Addison was going to perform the surgery.  
"Well, Alex and I are getting the heart transplant." Meredith smiled.  
"How's that fair?" George wondered.  
"We are on peds, we get pediatric surgeries and you get the Norwood." Alex suggested as an answer.  
"Yang would be killing for these." George laughed.  
"In that case you better not tell her because she's pissed at Owen and looking for blood." Meredith warned him.  
"What did Hunt do to her?" Alex laughed.  
"I'm not going to tell you. I'm just telling you to be careful today and tomorrow. Anyway, we have to get going. Heart is scheduled to arrive in 40 minutes." She said and got up.

The surgery went well and Meredith and Alex got out of the OR after 7 hours. Meredith was thankful it was over and grateful that the kid had a good chance of survival now, but she was delighted to get home to her son. When she walked into the resident locker room she saw Lexie, who was on Dr. Webber's service and who had complained about it ever since she had to take care of more post and pre ops than an intern. "How is Dr. Webber?" Meredith wondered.  
"Blaming everyone with the last name Grey for what your mother did. I'm enjoying every minute of it and it's only my week 6 of 12 on general. I feel like an intern again." Lexie said and looked at Meredith with eyes that were begging for help.  
"Sorry." Meredith apologized. She knew that the whole situation was partially her fault and she was sorry for it. She was sorry Ellis had chosen to tell nobody about the child she had given up for adoption and she was sorry that Dr. Webber hadn't chosen her mother instead of Adele.  
"You don't have to apologize. It wasn't you who pissed him off." Lexie said and she was right.  
"Well, technically it was me…" Meredith started to say, but Lexie interrupted her before she could finish with 'who told him'.  
"Yeah, but you just told him, your mom was the one who did something and I was the one that kept digging" Lexie smiled "At least Bailey isn't too bad."  
"That's hard to believe" Meredith giggled thinking about her days with 'the Nazi'. "So what are you doing tomorrow?"  
Lexie smiled for a moment, but as she realized how close her patient's fate was to her father's, she sighed "Liver transplant. I wonder if dad would have needed one if we didn't make him stop when we did. I'm not a match and Molly isn't…"  
"But Thatcher is fine, isn't he?" Meredith tried to find out more. While he hasn't been a poster book father after Ellis and she had left Boston, he was trying to make up for it with Christopher.  
"Well, yeah, but …" Lexie mumbled.  
"… you keep worrying about things that are never going to happen? It's normal. Seems to be genetic." Meredith giggled. She had never anticipated that Lexie and she would be so much alike even though their upbringing had been entirely different.  
"You do it too?" Lexie looked up at her half sister and smiled.  
"All the time." Meredith laughed thinking about all the disasters and tragedies that had happened inside of her head.

After getting changed they drove home in Meredith's car. They had reached a major junction when Lexie suddenly asked "Mer, did you and George ever?"  
"Ever what?" Meredith stopped the car at a red light and looked at Lexie.  
"I… I… he and I spend a lot of…" Lexie stammered and Meredith began to realize what Lexie wanted to know.  
"Lexie, get to the point. I was in the OR for 6 hours and I would appreciate if you get to the point. You and George…" Meredith insisted.  
"I think he likes me." Lexie blared out.  
"Well that's fantastic" Meredith said and observed how the expression on Lexie's face changed from relieved to totally freaked out "Unless, wait, hold on, you don't like him."  
"Yeah, he's like a brother. But he's very sweet and caring and he's saying all the right things." Lexie said.  
"And you are so desperate and lonely?" Meredith asked and laughed.  
"Yeah. " Lexie admitted and neither of them said anything for a while.  
"My advice: Don't do it. Dating people from work doesn't get you anywhere." Meredith told her and thought back to George and Callie and Cristina and Burke. She had had the not dating anyone at work policy for a reason.  
"Says the wife of the head of neuro surgery." Lexie giggled.  
"Well, Derek and I were married when he came to Seattle." Meredith insisted.  
"Mer, I know the story. Just admit that there's a chance." Lexie asked.  
"Whatever, Lexie. My advice: don't go there. You have to see him every day and they introduced a non fraternization policy during the merger." Meredith reminded her sister.  
"But George is not my boss. Unlike Derek" Lexie tried to argue without really knowing why she was arguing about it as she felt of George like a brother.  
"Derek was not my boss when we met, when we got married, and two minutes ago he was like a brother. Seriously Lexie, you are old enough to figure that one out for yourself."


	11. Chapter 9

_I'm sort of overwhelmed by the feedback I got for the last chapter! Thank you! You are all amazing! I'm glad you are all enjoying the story!_

 _Jill: Not tonight, and they want it just as much as you do... but it won't be long.  
Shelley: Yes, there's lots to come. Not just MerDer, but also other characters.  
Sara: Thank you! Lots of MerDer to come.  
Caryn: Will be a while until they can take a weekend off and spend time all by themselves. They are still getting used to having Christopher around.  
Kiley: Thanks!  
Susan: I hope you'll enjoy all the chapters that are about to come.. .  
Melanie: Thank you! I'm glad you like the story.  
Charlene: Thank you!  
Patsy: Meredith isn't comfortable with christening her son just yet, maybe it's going to change in the future, maybe not. Have to wait and see! _

* * *

**Chapter 9**

 _The big day is here. The day you're going to hear the news, the test result. Is the biopsy malignant or benign? Am I going live or die? You just want to know even if the news is scary because then you can move on - whatever that means. And sometimes you don't realize it's going to be a scary day to begin with._

It was a beautiful summer day in the middle of August and it was a beautiful day in the lives of Derek and Meredith. "Are you ready?" Derek wondered when he lifted up the last box of books.  
"Why wouldn't I be ready?" Meredith looked at him in surprise while holding Christopher.  
"We are moving into our new house. A house without roommates. Now's the time to freak out, if you want to freak out." Derek laughed.  
"I don't. It's fine." Meredith said while putting Christopher into his car seat. "Christopher, daddy is going to show us the beautiful house he built for us"  
"Ready?" Derek wondered when he closed the car door before he put the key into ignition. While Christopher was playing with a teddy bear Meredith felt the anticipation building up in her body.  
"Yeah, Christopher is in his car seat and Mark carried all my suitcases and put them into his car, yours are in the back. I think I'm ready to see the house." Meredith said and laughed. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful day to take the next step.

They had just reached the ferry terminal when they heard a familiar 'beep'. "Crap, I hate this pager." Meredith said while Derek turned his car around. She hated her pager and looked at Derek. "Can you drive me to the hospital?"  
"I guess I have to." He laughed. You can't miss a page.  
"Don't wait for me, just take Christopher to the house, get him settled in and I'll be there when I get out of the hospital." Meredith had just suggested when they heard another page. This time is was Derek's pager.  
"Guess we won't get to see the house until tomorrow." He sighed.  
"I hate those pagers." Meredith laughed and turned around to talk to Christopher. "Christopher, I promise you, you are going to sleep in your own bed tonight, but mommy and daddy have to take care of some patients now."  
"I can bring him up to daycare."

* * *

"What happened?" Meredith rushed into the emergency bay. It was swarmed with patients.  
"Accident, about 20 injured teenagers who were visiting Washington State to look at university." Cristina filled her in before  
"Alright people, I need everyone down there. Examine the patient, consult the attending, book the OR, get them admitted or discharged, we need all hands here." Dr. Hunt instructed all available residents.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Grey. I need to check your airway, breathing and heart beat." Meredith told the young girl in front of her. Her hair was dyed pink and she wore black contact lenses and reminded Meredith of the way she used to dress. While she looked fearless Meredith knew she wasn't and tried to calm her down. "Your parents are on the way. Can you tell me if you feel any pain?"  
"No I'm fine." The girl said, but Meredith knew that trauma patients didn't always feel pain due to the adrenaline that was rushing through their body after an accident.  
She used an ultrasound to examine the abdomen and noticed a built up of fluids "Oh my god"  
"What's the matter? Is everything okay?" the girl asked concerned. Meredith's little freak out didn't calm her down.  
"Yes, but we have to take you to the CT. It looks like there has been a buildup of fluids in your abdomen and we have to find out where it's coming from." Meredith explained and asked a nurse to notify the CT.

While they were on the way to the CT the girl suddenly asked "Is it normal that my vision is blurry? And ykkm wa ba ba" Meredith checked her pupils immediately and noticed that they were blown. How could she have missed that during the first exam. She shouted "Page neuro and general and book OR2. Tell them we are coming in there for an emergency craniotomy and exploratory laparotomy."

While waiting for an attending an OR nurse suggested to her to start the preparation. But Derek rushed into the OR before she was able to start "Dr. Grey, what a pleasure, it's been a while" Derek chuckled. "It's a beautiful day to save lives"  
"Dr. Shepherd, Where's the general surgeon?" Meredith looked at her husband.  
"Her vitals aren't stable, Dr. Shepherd, you have to hurry." The surgical nurse told him. "I'll page general again"  
"I don't know, but we should start. Looks like she has a cerebal edema in the speech center of her brain. I have to get in there now. Can you take care of the bleeding in her abdomen?" Derek asked while prepping himself for surgery, putting on a mask and gloves.  
"I'm not sure. I've never done this on my own. Not like this." Meredith looked at him. She was nervous. The idea that the patient's traumatic injuries in his abdomen were her responsibility was scary. The surgeries she had done were regular ones, trauma was a completely different story because it was messy and you never knew what to expect.  
"Relax. Remember your training. You can do this" He sweet talked her into starting. "Take the scalpel and make the incision."  
"I can't do this, there's blood everywhere. I must have perforated an artery." Meredith said and looked up from the surgical field.  
"Have you identified the source of the bleeding?" Derek asked her while Meredith tried to tell her intern to give her suction.  
"It's her spleen. I'm almost certain. But the visualization isn't good. I need sponges and suction and a second pair of hands." Meredith said and bit her lips.  
"Relax Meredith, everything is okay. Take a deep breath." Derek tried to calm her down while pocking inside the patient's brain. It wasn't an ideal situation. "Calm down and tell yourself that you can do it. What are the steps of a splenectomy?"  
"First you do the incision and enter the abdomen." Meredith said.  
"Right, do it. Upper midline incision. We don't know if it's the only injured organ and right now you are better safe than sorry."  
"Alright, I'm here. I'm going to start the dissection now. Blunt and sharp." Meredith nodded and bit her lip. She tried to follow the convex shape of the spleen with her hand to identify the peritoneal attachments. But she was nervous because the patient's vitals weren't great. "Grasp the spleen, Howards." She ordered the intern and he displaced the organ medially toward incision while she electrocauterized the ligaments and peritoneal attachments.  
"I have to identify the splenic artery and vein now and dissect them. I haven't done the suture to close and transfix them on a patient yet. How do I do them and where's the general surgeon?" Meredith said and looked at Derek. "It's been twenty minutes. Someone should be here by now."  
"You just do it like you do on the model." Derek tried to calm her down.  
"You doubly ligate the artery and vein with a 0 nonabsorbable suture and transfix it with a 2-0 silk suture ligature. Do it at the hilum to avoid damaging the pancreas. You've seen Dr. Webber do it." The nurse helped her and handed over the necessary instruments.  
"Thank you. But can you page Bailey or Webber again. I was supposed to be unpacking boxes today." Meredith said and tried to perform the suture the best she could. "We could have sex right now." Meredith blared out loud and all heads turned and looked at her.  
Derek laughed and kept pushing her to continue the procedure "Gastric vessels."  
"Lembert suture. My mom taught me on my eleventh birth. She was stuck in an OR and I was up in the gallery. I asked her why she'd do it and she said that I would need it one day. Turns out she was a good parent for once. Do you know why I am going to use it?" Meredith asked the intern who said he didn't.  
"A Lembert suture is placed in the gastric wall in a seromuscular fashion to avoid the complication of gastric fistulization when one is unable to identify the source of bleeding from the stomach." Meredith explained and was calm while she continued the procedure. She had reached a vital point in the procedure now. The spleen was ready to be delivered into the wound with blunt dissection of the posterior attachments now. She had to make sure that the posterior attachments were not divided too far medially and that the spleen was not rotated axially before she secured the splenic vessels with a clamp as such rotation would load to the disruption of either splenic artery or vein. She looked at the intern and said "I'm going to ligate them individually and I'm going to use double ligation and transfixion with non absorbable suture ligatures."  
"Sounds about right. It's what Dr. Webber has been doing for years" the nurse nodded. But you might want to proceed with suture ligation using a transfixed technique afterwards. We don't want slipped off sutures."  
"She's crashing." Another nurse alerted all of them.  
"I only need a few seconds after the spleen is removed. Wait, please, she'll be stable once I identified the source of active bleeding and achieved hemostasis." Meredith insisted and continued to operated while all the alarms were beeping. After she finished her last move the patient's vitals went back to normal. "Here we go. You can administer the platelet transfusion now if Dr. Shepherd is okay with that."  
"Go ahead" Derek nodded when the OR door opened  
"Sorry, I was with another patient until a few minutes ago." Dr. Bailey apologized for being late.  
"It's alright, Dr. Grey got it" the intern said.  
Dr. Bailey looked up to Meredith and stepped to the table next to her. "Good job, Grey. You can close him, Howards. Linea alba with 1-0 polyproylene monofilament suture. Left subcostal in layers with a 1-0 absorbable and the skin edges can be stapled. But I'm going to check on everything again before you do it because I don't want Dr. Grey to worry about the patient all night in case something goes wrong."  
"I'm finished." Derek said while Bailey checked every suture Meredith had done.  
"So are we. Let Dr. Howard do the closure. Get her to recovery, Howard and Grey, leave now! I know you two were moving houses today, so just do it." Bailey commanded the intern and the resident.  
"Alright, Dr. Bailey." Meredith smiled and walked into the scrub room with Derek.

"That was nice. We haven't been in the OR together in quite some time." Derek said. "I miss you on neuro"  
"Well, I have to finish my rotation before I can specialize. But yeah, it was nice. Do you think she'll be okay?" Meredith wondered.  
"We'll have to wait and see." Derek said and kissed Meredith's cheek "But she wouldn't have made it so far without you."  
"I couldn't have done it without you." Meredith said.  
"You could. Any other resident in your year would have frozen. You stepped up and moved forward." Derek corrected her "Anyway, I'm going to pick up our son and we are going to take the ferry and drive to our house."

* * *

They arrived at their land. Meredith had a lot of memories here. It's where she walked into Derek's sister Nancy lying on the bed and it's where she had realized that she wanted to raise Christopher with Derek. It was where they were going to raise their children. They finally stood in front of their house, something they should have done hours ago, but instead they had to save a life which wasn't a bad alternate activity as the house was still there and the patient probably wouldn't if it wasn't for them. "So this is the big reveal?" Meredith giggled with her eyes blindfolded as they stood in front of their house.  
"Yeah, this is the big reveal." Derek nodded putting the key into their front door. "Excited?"  
"You bet I am, but it's weird, the last time anyone ever talked about a big reveal it was when my mom took me to this crappy apartment after we moved to Boston. Worst place I ever lived in, even our free 'hotel' room in Amsterdam looked way nicer." Meredith said while Derek guided her into the living room.

"Can I take it off now?" Meredith wondered after he had kissed her.  
"I'll do it" Derek said and opened the knot.  
It took a few seconds for Meredith's eyes to adjust to the light, but when she looked around the room was speechless and smiled, she looked around again because it all seemed like a dream. The wooden floors, the couch and the décor, everything looked like it had been taken straight out of 'architecture weekly'. "Oh my god, this looks amazing, not like a surgeon's house, but like a place where people actually live in. You did a great job here"  
"Well, the decorator did most of it and you have to see the bed room." Derek tried to guide her into their new oasis of peace.  
"And we have to get Christopher to his bed and we better do it before Addison, Mark, Lexie and the rest show up here." Meredith reminded him. If they hadn't been called to the hospital they would have had plenty of time to prepare the house warming party, but due to their surgery all she had done was to order 10 pizzas.  
"Come on, 5 minutes" Derek begged.  
"We don't have 5 minutes. I'm going to care Christopher upstairs and you are going to carry your suitcase inside." Meredith smiled and leaned in to kiss him.

Their lips had just touched when she heard the door bell. "See, we don't have five minutes." She sighed.  
"Who's it anyway?" Derek wondered. He knew that most of their friends would be stuck in the hospital for another while.  
"I ordered pizza, figured people would be hungry. I am anyway." Meredith giggled.  
"You ditch me for pizza?" Derek asked slightly offended.  
"It's very good pizza. But I have to take Christopher upstairs first, he needs to get into his new bed and can you bring me his blue light from the car. I put it into the diaper bag to make sure we'll have it tonight." Meredith said and kissed her slightly puzzled husband.

* * *

"What a day" Derek sighed. He held on to his beer and approached the people who were gathered around his kitchen counter.  
"Yeah, that bus accident will give me a lot to do the next few day. Lots of facial reconstructions." Mark nodded "Torres is assessing some of the fractures as we speak and I'll be in the OR all day tomorrow and all I get for your house warming here is cold pizza."  
"I would have cooked, but I was in the OR all day" Meredith giggled.  
"…and I guess you'd prefer cold pizza over whatever Meredith would have cooked anyway." Derek added with a huge grin on his face.  
"Mark, You said you were going to take Maria to the park." Addison reminded him.  
Mark rolled his eyes "That was before I knew that I had a dozen of teenagers to deal with this week. I never give you crap about your pregnant patients who decide to give birth in the middle of the night." Addison rolled her eyes. "That's hardly my fault."  
Mark turned to Lexie who was starting to eat a piece of tuna pizza "Grey, you can scrub in with me. Avery can't manage to read up on all the procedures, so you can learn something as I take your sister still isn't interested in joining the dark side."  
"I'm not." Meredith nodded.  
"It's a nice house you built here Derek. I want a house like that." Mark told his friend.  
"You always wanted the things I had." Derek reminded him and looked at Addison.  
Addison looked at Mark and told him "And I don't want to live in the woods."  
"Well, we had trees in the Hamptons." Derek reminded her.  
"Those were the Hamptons, Derek, living in the middle of the wood in Washington state is a different story all together. What happens next, are you going to start to wear flannel?"

* * *

"Anyway, I'm going to head home. Early shift tomorrow." Lexie tried to say good bye around 1.00 am. Meredith knew that Derek had set up all 4 guest rooms for their friends tonight so she insisted that Lexie didn't take the one hour longer way back to Seattle. "Stay in the guest room, the ferry is not operating until 5.00 am anyway"  
"Where is it?" Lexie yawned.  
Meredith giggled and blushed. The house was massive and she had no clue where which room was on the second floor "Honestly, I don't know. It's funny because it's my house and I should know, but I don't. You might have to ask Derek."  
"Or we go looking for it ourselves, I mean this house isn't a maze or something." Lexie suggested. "We should be able to find it and I have to tell you something. Where is Cristina?"  
"She's avoiding me and babies. And I guess two at a time are just too much for her to handle. So, let's go and find this guest room."

"So what did you want to tell me?" Meredith asked as they sat down on the bed in the first guest room they could find. It had a nice queen sized bed and huge window front where you were able to overlook Seattle.  
"I kissed George." Lexie bid her lip.  
"You kissed George." Meredith repeated in disbelief.  
"And it was weird." Lexie added.  
"And it was weird." Meredith nodded. She still did not fully process what her half sister was saying.  
"Are you going to stop to repeat everything I say?" Lexie wondered and took Meredith back to reality.  
"I'm just trying to process it." Meredith said "So you kissed George. Was it a friendly kiss or did you go all the way with tongue and … "  
"I did and half way through I realized that it's weird, but it was too late to stop because George started to kiss me too." Lexie said and looked at Meredith who looked at her sister and instantly knew that there was more to the story than a short innocent kiss "So?"  
"We had sex." Lexie said and looked at Meredith.  
"You thought the kiss was weird, but you had sex?" Meredith wondered.  
"I was confused and lonely and he said all those sweet things. When we kissed it was awkward, but I hoped it would get better if we have sex. But I started to cry while we had sex. I think I ruined our friendship." Lexie admitted "We had sex and I cried."  
Meredith asked. "You cried while you had sex?"  
"I know it's weird. Have you ever cried during sex?" Lexie asked and looked at her.  
"Thankfully not, that is a thing I don't want to add to my list of embarrassing sex experiences. So it's weird between the two of you now?" Meredith wondered and thought back to the time when she found out that George had had a crush on her at the beginning of their intern year.  
"That's an understatement. It felt like I was kissing my dad." Lexie said.  
Meredith laughed and Lexie didn't know why. Meredith had never told Lexie that Ellis had thought George was Thatcher when he came into her room for an exam "Well, he looks a little like Thatch"  
"That doesn't make me feel better." Lexie said.  
"Well, it wasn't supposed to, I told you that it wasn't a good idea." Meredith said and got up. "You better sleep now. Busy day tomorrow."

* * *

The next day started with a consult on a two month old preemie who was born at 27 weeks. Meredith was waiting for Addison to finish the exam and confirm the diagnosis when Addison said. "It's a nice house."  
"Thanks, Addison." Meredith said modestly and as they were alone she thought it might be a good moment to ask something more intimate "Do you have sex? We tried, but every time we try one of our pagers goes off, the baby cries or we get a phone call that the baby cries. It's frustrating."  
"You should schedule sex." Addison laughed and let out a little sigh. "It makes things sort of mechanically"  
"Seriously?" Meredith wondered.  
"That's how we do it. We even got a babysitter and went away for the weekend." Addison admitted.  
"I'm a resident. A weekend off is not an option. But thanks, I'll think about it -even though it's kind of desperate." Meredith laughed.  
"It is, but you really don't have a choice. The hospital and the baby…" Addison replied bitterly and Meredith added "… would be ruining your sex life" while Cristina walked into the room. It seemed like she would do the cardio consult. "That's what you get for having a baby. I love my perfect childless life, Mer."  
"I love my life, Cristina. I performed my first solo trauma surgery yesterday and when I got to a vital point I remembered something my mother taught me. I always thought that all she did was abandoning me, but she taught me the things she knew about, which was surgery. Things change when you become a parent."  
Cristina rolled her eyes and Meredith looked at her "You removed a spleen, big deal, woho" Cristina said unenthusiastically.  
"Bailey said it wasn't an easy repair. Congratulations Grey, you are a big girl now" Addison said "Don't you want to give us your diagnosis, Dr. Yang?"

 _They say ignorance is bliss because once you know about the tumor or the prognosis, you can't go back. Will you be strong or will you fall apart? It's hard to predict so don't worry about it. Enjoy the time you have before the news comes. Yep, ignorance is bliss._

"Is this Dr. Shepherd?" the person on the other end of the line wondered.  
"Yes, who is this?"  
"Dr. Montgomery recommended you. We need you for a consult. I'm going to send you the scans and I would like you to look at them" the doctor said.


	12. Chapter 10

_Get ready for the weekend update! Thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you enjoy the story and I hope you stay around for more!_

 _Melanie: Thank you! Derek is going to return in chapter 11 and they'll finally make time..._  
 _Kiley: Very private consult in chapter 11._  
 _Stephanie: Thank you!_  
 _Sara: Hope you enjoy the next chapter!_  
 _Shelley: Yeah, right now they are in mommy/daddy mode and trying to figure out how to balance everything._  
 _Charlene: More to come!_  
 _Jill: No, April hasn't called Derek. He's out of state as you'll find out in this chapter._  
 _Patsy: Thank you for the review!_  
 _Susan: Let's see where the story is taking us. It's not completely uncharted, but I incorporated some storylines I wanted to explore. Hope you enjoy it._  
 _Lily: Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoy the story!_  
 _Arlene: More bounding time about to come._

* * *

**Chapter 10**

 _The dream is this - that we'll finally be happy when we reach our goals: find the guy, finish our residency raise our kids, that's the dream. Then we get there. And if we're human, we immediately start dreaming of something else. Because, if this is the dream, then we'd like to wake up. Now, please!_

"Your son is getting big." Bailey noted when Meredith held Christopher in the elevator. "But he doesn't have his dad's hair."  
"But he has his eyes and his smile. I could look at him for ages." Meredith smiled "Can't believe he's 5 months old."  
Bailey nodded. She was able to remember Tucker's first year very clearly. Time was running fast. "It goes by so fast, he's going to be up and running before you know it. How's that new house?"  
Meredith sighed. Derek had been gone for three days now and she started to miss him like crazy. After a short phone call he had started to act weird around her and had booked a flight to L.A. almost immediately after looking at the case. But she wasn't just missing him, she also missed his help with Christopher. "It's big and it feels weird to be in it alone now that Derek is gone for the week and I'm here at work and everything is so stressful. I couldn't do this without him. It's feels like I'm missing out on so much in Christopher's life because he spends a lot more time in daycare when Derek is gone. Do you ever feel like you are missing out on Tuck's life?"  
"Yeah, it's why I couldn't pursue the peds fellowship position I was offered. I just kept thinking that if I wanted to hold a child all day, I'd be at home, holding my own." Bailey said. "I don't know how you can stay sane on that rotation."  
"I know. I mean I know why you couldn't. All this suffering and pain. They are little kids, they don't deserve the cards they are dealt with." Meredith nodded.  
"Because you want to shelter them from everything bad and make them feel like they are loved and protected and then you go over to the peds wing and realize that you have absolutely no power over what's going to happen to them." Bailey added.  
"And that's why I don't want to have a child. They are depressing, you have to take care of them and they make you unfocused in your job. But my boyfriend doesn't understand that, apparently he wouldn't mind to raise a football team." Cristina interrupted them. The doors opened and Bailey left the elevator shaking her head while Meredith and Cristina stayed behind in the elevator .  
Meredith looked at her and knew "You still haven't told him?"  
"No. I haven't" Cristina admitted "I can't be like you. You are clocking 20% less hours in the OR compared to me. I couldn't ever go back to that."  
"Coward! Just do it! Rip off the band aid! I better get going. As you know I have to take Christopher home. Derek, Addison and Mark went to L.A. to visit some old friends and Derek was called in for a consult, so we are going to be alone tonight. He won't be home until Sunday."

* * *

 _"So this is the big reveal, Meredith, this is the place we are going to live in the next few months. Just you and me, sweetie we'll spend so much time together because all men are cowards." Ellis told her daughter as she turned around the key to open the door. They hadn't slept since she had woken up her daughter in the middle of the night the day before. "It's not as nice as your room in Seattle but you'll get used to it. We are getting a fresh start here in Boston."  
Meredith walked around the one bed room apartment. There was hardly any furniture in it and the walls looked blank. "Mommy, I don't like this house and I forgot my anatomy Jane, can you ask someone to get it?"  
"I'm very sorry, Meredith, but nobody can know that we are here. You'll have to get by without her" Ellis told her and cradled her.  
"But I want my anatomy Jane." Meredith insisted and tears were filling up her eyes.  
"You have to learn to live without it. I left my anatomy Jane in Seattle too." Ellis tried to cheer Meredith up. She wanted her to grow up to become a strong woman who wouldn't make the choices she did.  
Meredith looked at her mother who she had hardly seen the past few months because she had been working a lot. She had been saving lives according to her father. "I didn't know you were playing with dolls?"  
"I was. We can to a shop and buy something nice for you tomorrow. You know mommy loves you, do you?" Ellis said and told Meredith to go to bed.  
"Yes, and I love you too. And I love daddy."Meredith looked up at her. She did not understand what was going on.  
Ellis sat down next to Meredith. "Meredith, you have to look at me and you have to promise me that you are not going to cry now, but we won't see daddy again. He's in Seattle and we are in Boston. We had to leave and he had to stay there. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"  
The little girl nodded even though she did not fully comprehend. _

* * *

"Here we are young man! Your very own crib for tonight. Right beside mommies bed." Meredith smiled and put Christopher down in his portable crib. She needed his company. She needed to feel close to someone because the house seemed to be too big without Derek. She kissed Christopher's cheek and told him "Mommy is going to get your blue light and we'll sleep just fine without daddy" before she left the room with the baby monitor.

She browsed through every box, she looked into her hand bag over and over again and cursed herself. It wasn't in the car either. The light was nowhere to be found "You suck! You are an idiot and you shouldn't be a mother!"  
She grabbed her phone and dialed her sister's number. She knew Lexie was working the night shift and that she might be able to answer a question for her. "Lexie, you are at the hospital, right? Can you do me a favor and see if Chris' blue night light is in my locker?"  
"It is" Lexie texted her five minutes later.  
"Thanks! I'm an idiot." Meredith replied and mumbled "My son will hate me because I'm a crappy mom."  
"Don't worry. He won't notice." Lexie replied, but Meredith felt like a bad mother.

"Mommy is sorry, she forgot your blue light at the hospital. But you don't have to be afraid, she's right here with you tonight and daddy is going to be home soon too. He's in L.A. at the moment operating on someone who has a very rare brain tumor and he helps that person to get better. Otherwise he wouldn't abandon us. He had to leave and we had to stay here. He's in L.A. and we are in Seattle, do you understand? He'll be back before we know it, so please be a good boy tonight and let mommy sleep because she…" Meredith whispered when she sat down on her side of the bed for a while "… you are asleep and you are such a good boy." Meredith watched him for a little while before she grabbed the baby monitor again and went into the living room.

Meredith dialed Derek's number. "Your son is asleep. How's L.A.?"  
"It's nice. It's weird to hang out with the old crew. Mark, Maria and Addison spent the day at the beach while I was stuck at the hospital Sam is working at." The voice on the other side of the line.  
"How did the consult go?" Meredith wondered.  
"Fine, I'm just not sure the patient wants the surgery." Derek said.  
"Why?" Meredith wondered. It seemed unusual.  
"The tumor is situated right in the part of the brain that makes her who she is. Right in the temporal lobe. It's a difficult decision. Would you want to erase everything you are for the chance of surviving as someone totally different. How was your day?"  
"Held a dying child for 40 minutes until her dad came and I went to daycare after she died, I know it's stupid but I just had to check on Christopher and I forgot his blue light in my locker, so I'm officially the worst mom in the universe." Meredith said. It was one of those days where she would have needed his hug and his smile to make her feel better, but hearing her voice was all she could do.  
"I thought that title was reserved for your mother." He joked.  
"Well, it's one area where I easily outshine her." Meredith insisted. Meredith was able to hear Derek's giggle at the other end of the phone.  
"You are a great mom."  
"I'm not. I forgot his blue light."  
"And right now he's probably asleep and lying 10 metres away from you. You are a wonderful mom." Derek insisted.  
"It feels weird to be here without you. I miss you, Derek. It's like I can't sleep alone."  
"I'll be back before you know it. I love you Meredith. I'll go and talk to Sam a little bit."

* * *

"Kepner, what are you doing here? Last time I checked you were on neuro." Meredith wondered when she walked up to the nurse station in the peds ward.  
"Well, Dr. Shepherd isn't here this week and Dr. Bailey said my talent could be utilized somewhere else in a better way while he is away. So I'm covering for Dr. Karev today who reached his 80 hour limit last night." April said with a smile on her face.  
"Delightful." Meredith said and forced herself to smile.  
April didn't pay much attention to her reaction and continued to talk "It must be wonderful to be married to him. You must miss him. I am. I mean I would. I would miss him if he was my husband and was away for the week. The patients missed him yesterday."  
Meredith bid her lips and tried to calm herself down. She missed Derek, but didn't want to lash out at someone for no reason. "April, this admiration for my husband, it's professional, isn't it? Because if it wasn't… if it wasn't professional. "  
"It's completely professional" April insisted "Dr. Shepherd is a very gifted surgeon and a wonderful person. The way he talks to the patients, it's amazing and I think it's amazing that he wants to christen your son."  
"April, shut up." Meredith interrupted her. "He won't baptized him. I don't want to do it now. I want to wait until he's old enough to understand what it means to be Christian, to be christened. I'm not religious and I don't want to feel like a hypocrite pledging to raise him in a way I don't believe in."  
"Meredith, you wouldn't be a hypocrite if you let Dr. Shepherd raise Christopher that way. It's enough if one parent knows how to guide him and how to provide moral support" April said, but Meredith glared at her. "I'm just saying, if it's just a little water over his head for you, let Dr. Shepherd decide if he wants to do it."  
"April, I appreciate your input here, but if you keep talking I'm going to kill you with that scalpel here." Meredith threatened her and the red head finally backed off and looked at some charts again. She was able to provide moral support. She had values.

Meredith was annoyed that she had to spend the day with April Kepner. All of her friends had told her that she had a little crush on her husband and most of them made fun of April because of it. Meredith wasn't that kind of person, but she needed some private place to get all the anger she felt at the minute off her chest. She walked into a supply closet and after walking in she noticed that there was somebody in there. It was Callie and a blonde woman who was wearing navy scrubs. They were kissing or more than kissing, she only saw them for a few seconds. She froze and stuttered "Oh my god, sorry, I was."  
"Get out Grey." Callie shouted and Dr. Robbins turned around.  
"Sorry." Meredith said and walked out of the room. This was a truly unusual day it was the first time she was the one who walked into someone making out in the supply closet.

Meredith starred at George. She was walking down the stairs when she ran into him. It was the first time they met since Lexie had told her about their night. She kept starring at him and he grabbed her shoulders. She looked at him and said "I just walked in on your ex wife and Dr. Robbins. I have no words for this. They were making out in supply closet. I mean, who does that?"  
"You and Shepherd did." George reminded her and laughed.  
"Point taken." Meredith giggled, but George had processed what she had just told him and wondered. "My ex wife is into girls and the last person I had sex with started crying while we were at it. What's wrong with me?"  
"I know, Lexie told me, or did it happen again?" Meredith asked cautiously.  
"Lexie told you? This is embarrassing." George said and hid behind a chart.  
"She just thought that it was like kissing her brother. She really likes you, but only as a friend." Meredith told him.  
"Why did she kiss me?"  
Meredith laughed. "Because she's screwed up, lonely and irrational. She's a Grey. Misery seems to be in our DNA."  
"Why am I always the friend, never the one any woman considers to be anything more than a friend? I'm 007 or Bambi. I'm hilarious, I'm a joke, look at poor George O'Malley who sleeps with women and they either turn out to be lesbians or start crying. Look at me! Look at poor George." George shouted.  
"George, relax. You don't want the entire hospital to know about this, don't you?" Meredith tried to calm him down, but she was quite unsuccessful. She turned around and saw her sister "What? You are unbelievable. I tell you one thing and you go and discuss this with George?"  
"Lexie, It wasn't like this." Meredith turned around.  
"Sure it wasn't sure he came to you and told you 'oh Meredith, I used to have this huge crush on you, but now I kissed your sister and she cried while we had sex'." Lexie shouted back at her and George.  
"I didn't mention your name. Do you know how I feel?" George tried to talk to her to explain the situation.  
"Like you lost your best friend?" Lexie asked. George really did feel like this, but he felt like this because Izzie had left, not because he couldn't talk to Lexie anymore "Because that's how I feel. We talked so much since the merger. You got me." Lexie continued.  
George tried to get away and used the standard line as an excuse."I have to go, I have to prepare a patient for surgery."  
"Thank you for everything! Just stay out of my way next time I share private information with you." Lexie told Meredith.  
"It wasn't like this Lexie." Meredith said, but her half sister didn't hear her.

After this unpleasant confrontation Meredith walked back to the peds ward where she met Dr. Robbins. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Robbins. I didn't know you were in there. I'm not going to tell anyone because I don't think it's any of my business." Meredith said. It was common knowledge to anyone that Callie was having sex in the hospital, but she had never heard anyone saying this about Arizona Robbins.  
"It's fine, Dr. Grey." The pediatric surgeon said. "I have three patients I need you to monitor. They are all waiting for organ transplants, so you know what you have to do. The parameters are in the charts. Page me if something happens." Meredith nodded and was left to herself for the rest of the day.

* * *

"Heard O'Malley freaked out on the stairway?" Alex wondered when she stopped by at the old house after work.  
"He did." Meredith rolled her eyes. Rumors really did spread fast inside the walls of the hospital.  
"And now Lexie is mad at me because I talked to him about it even though he was the one that brought it up and even though I told her that she would regret pursuing him in the first place. But I guess, I would have done the same."Meredith noticed as she discussed the issue with Alex over a cup of coffee.  
"Do you think she got that consult? I mean looking at her tumor markers she could be dead by now if she didn't. We'd never find out if she was." Alex said and looked at her.  
"Forget about her, Alex. You are in Seattle and she is in Boston." Meredith said using the phrase her mother had used to explain to her that she couldn't talk to her dad anymore. "You had to stay here and she had to leave.  
"What are you trying to tell me? She's in L.A." Alex wondered. He had virtually no clue what she was trying to tell him.  
"It's something my mother told me. I guess what she meant was that some things can't be fixed because you are not in the same place. And that you are not in the same place because it wouldn't be beneficial if you were in the same place." Meredith said.  
"All philosophical now?" Alex let out a sarcastic laugh.  
"It's what happens if you take care of a baby all by yourself. You have a lot of time to think if you lack adult company. I mean I hardly get to see Cristina because since I had Christopher I'm pariah to her. I'm really looking forward to Derek's return. He has a lot to make up for after one week." Meredith laughed and started to prepare Christopher's bottle.  
"What is he doing in L.A. anyway?" Alex wondered and took Christopher out of his car seat to feed him. "Why didn't he take you with him?"  
"I don't know. Maybe because I'm a resident and working" Meredith answered.  
"So what is he doing there? Must be a special patient if he flies all the way down there"  
Meredith handed over the bottle for him after checking the temperature. "He's down there for a consult, the patient agreed to the removal of the tumor now. Stage 4. Metastatic. 5% chance of survival. That's all he wanted to tell me.

* * *

The next day was a little bit better. Staying at the frat house for the night had made things easier for Meredith as Alex had volunteered to look after Christopher at night and sleeping in the old bed room made her miss Derek a little less. They had had a lot of fun in that bed. The house wasn't empty in the morning and her travelling time was halved. She scrubbed in on one hernia repair and two tonsillectomies with Dr. Robbins so time moved quickly. She got out of the hospital in time to meet Cristina for one beer at Joe's. Meredith sat down next to Cristina saying "My husband is in L.A."  
"You still haven't had sex?" Cristina looked at her and laughed. "How long has it been?"  
"We still haven't had sex and based on the fact that Derek won't be back for two days that's not going to change too soon. I need sex. Everyone at this hospital is getting some, but me." Meredith giggled and ordered a beer. "This child keeps me from having sex."  
"If it's any consolation, I don't have sex either. Owen is pissed that I haven't told him that I don't want kids. Like what am I supposed to tell him? 'Hello I'm Cristina Yang and I don't want children' " Cristina rolled her eyes.  
"He's withholding sex?" Meredith looked surprised.  
Cristina nodded "Yes, because I don't want children and he has to assess whether he can be with me knowing that …"  
"you won't last because he knows he wants to have a family." Meredith added.  
"Anyway, be glad, your sexless streak is going to end once Derek is back." Cristina told Meredith and they both continued to drink their beer in silence.  
"Have I told you that we started to schedule sex like Dr. Sloan and Dr. Montgomery suggested because apparently that's what surgeons with babies do to get some." Meredith said after she finished her beer.  
"Sloan and Montgomery?" Cristina raised an eyebrow. "Ugh, seriously, gross, why do you even tell me?"  
"They have a kid, the fact that they have sex is kind of a giveaway." Meredith giggled. The both remained in silence while drinking the rest of their beer. Meredith got up and said "You will fix this."

"Glad to see you up here looking out for your nephew." Meredith said when she walked into the nursery to pick up Christopher. "He loves you"  
"Meredith, I didn't know you'd be up here. I can go if you want to. I didn't want to go up to the maternity ward because you might be there." Lexie apologized.  
"Lexie, it's fine, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have talked to George about you, but he started it. I found Callie and someone else making out in the supply closet and I just had to share it with someone. And then he started to talk about you and him. I shouldn't have engaged in that conversation and I'm sorry." Meredith said. She shouldn't have told George that Lexie had confided to her about the issue.  
"It's alright, I know you didn't mean to, but right now everything feels so messed up. I used to know what people my age do, I was prom queen and valedictorian but right now, I feel like I don't get anywhere. I don't know how people my age are supposed to feel. I see death all the time and it seems like everyone moves on with their lives and I'm stuck here in my own personal limbo. I just thought I had a plan. Finish my residency, get settled in my career, find a nice guy, move in with him, get married and have a kid." Lexie said "It just doesn't seem to work out for me."  
"It passes Lexie. That feeling passes and you can't plan your life. It just happens. One moment you are miserable and then comes the moment when you're not."

 _At some point maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves the reality is better. We convince ourselves it's better that we never dream at all. But the strongest of us, the most determined of us, we hold onto the dream, or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We awake to find ourselves, against all odds, feeling hopeful. And, if we're lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life the true dream is being able to dream at all._


	13. Chapter 11

_Felt like finishing a chapter last night... so here you go... I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for the reviews! I love to get feedback and I'm glad that you enjoy what I'm writing._

 _Melanie: Who knows? George and Lexie are both going to find love in this story... one of them in unexpected places... either way Meredith is going to end up being the maid of honor for one of them way down the line_  
 _Kiley: It was chapter 12 I was talking about (which I was putting into nice writing while I answered your review for chapter 9)... but there's a lot to look forward to..._ _  
Chrissy: Maybe they are made for each other, who knows?_  
 _Shelley: George really is a lost puppy, but there are going to be quite a few other lost puppies around the next few chapters..._  
 _Jill: Derek is back and there's going to be a lot of MerDer in chapter 12_  
 _Patsy: Thank you for the review! Hope you are going to enjoy this chapter as I'm adressing one point you raised in your last review._  
 _Susan: Glad you stick around! Lots of change is certain..._ _  
Melinda: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy the story and hope you keep reading._

* * *

 **Chapter 11**

 _The friends, neighbors, drinking buddies and partners in crime you love so much when you're young, when you are in high school or in college. As the years go by, you just lose touch. Sometimes it's a matter of years, sometimes a matter of months and sometimes it only takes a few seconds until they vanish from your life. You spend countless hours in an OR and while you are around people all the time, you just lose touch with most of the people around you and once you are on the carousel it's hard to get off. And if we get off we are not always in the same place we had been in before because when it stops it usually means that a catastrophe has happened._

It had only been a few days, but everything was different. Within a matter of hours Callie's life had turned from a beautiful fairytale in which she had finally met her princess into a classic tragedy. She had tasted what pure happiness felt like and she wanted more, but Arizona had chosen a job opportunity over her. Time stopped and everyone was moving around her while she froze. She knew she should be happy for Arizona as it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but she wasn't. "Callie, check out all the great stuff the kids in peds made me. They want me to take pictures of their crafts in Africa." Arizona carried a box full of presents her patients had made for her.  
"Oh, wow. That's awesome. You'd be surprised how often you find yourself in need of a macaroni face glued to a paper plate." Callie answered unenthusiastically "No. I mean, it's way better than gauze, Malaria pills, antibiotics."  
"Well, you are a delight this morning" Arizona remarked, swallowed and looked at Callie asking "Is there something that you'd like to talk about?"  
"Um No. No, I'm just no. You never mentioned Africa, so chances are I don't want to talk about important things with you." Callie said and turned around even though she knew that there was something she needed to talk about, but saying what she wanted to say meant that she would voice the most selfish thought she had ever had: 'Stay for me'.  
"Callie? They only called me a few days ago. I applied a year ago and I never thought I would get that scholarship."  
"No Arizona, you make this decision without even talking to me about it once. I know we've only been together a few weeks, but I think I love you and you didn't even ask me what I wanted. Don't pretend like I'm the bad person here. I wanted to build my life with you." Callie said and turned around running into Dr. Webber.  
"Ah. Dr. Robbins. I thought you'd be halfway to Malawi by now."  
"Yeah, I had some last-minute paperwork. Plus, I-I promised the kids I'd come and say good-bye." Arizona said and smiled.  
"That's good. The work you will be doing there will reflect very, very highly on this hospital. Sure, uh It was a surprise to learn that I'd have to replace one, Uh, excellent attending but then that's a chief's problem. No one wants to really hear a chief's problems. It's a shame, though, Robbins. We had, uh I had such big plans. Big plans." Webber said, but Arizona did not notice as she looked at Callie walking away thinking 'Callie, don't go now.'

* * *

The water on her hands felt good. She had been holding a clamp for six hours straight and by now she wasn't sure how she could still be awake. After scrubbing out of an emergency craniotomy with Dr. Nelson while she was on call, Meredith was sore, she was tired and felt wrecked, but knew she had another 8 hour shift ahead of her before she got to go home and finally see her husband again after a week apart. Her hand pushed the door open and for a second she thought she was dreaming. Her face lid up as she walked out of the OR. She had been standing in the OR for almost eight hours and was tired, but the sight she was looking at was beautiful, it made her forget about how tired she felt and how badly she wanted to have sex. Her husband wearing navy blue scrubs and smiled at her "You are back." Meredith hugged Derek and kissed him.  
"I took an early flight. I told you I'd be back before you know it. I missed you." He said and kissed her lips after kissing her forehead. "I needed to see you"  
"How did your surgery go?" Meredith wondered.  
"Not too bad, the patient woke up and will continue on four courses of chemo. But I'm confident I got the brain tumor out completely." Derek said and added a question about their son who had spent the night in daycare "How's Christopher?"  
"He has been missing his daddy and didn't sleep much tonight, Ellen said he was very moody, but he should be fine now. I better hurry or Addison and the new peds attending are going to kill me. So just take Christopher to daycare if you come to the hospital and I'm going to pick him up once I'm finished." Meredith told her husband "And I finished the endoscopy curriculum and am now trained and qualified to do endoscopies in any clinical setting. Isn't that amazing?"

* * *

 _Time is funny. We are in one place and then we are in another. Time stops for nobody, it just moves in different speeds_. Callie watched Arizona's mouth move. She looked at the lips she wouldn't kiss for years. She wanted to be supportive, but the whole scene seemed to fast forward around her. It passed her by like she wasn't there, like everything was just one long terrible nightmare. She didn't pay attention to what Arizona was saying and that Arizona tried to persuade herself to get onto the plane she was about to board. "And, you know, sure, there's not a lot to do over there, but, uh, that just means less to distract us from the medicine. It'll just be us focusing on the medicine, which is great. What? Oh, my god."  
Callie watched Arizona nervously checking the front pocket of her bag. "Did you forget your passport?"  
Arizona looked up and cracked. All they had done since she had heard about the scholarship was argue. "I won the Carter Madison grant. I won the Carter Madison grant. Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how special that is? This is the biggest opportunity of my professional career. I- I get to go to Malawi with almost unlimited funds And help children- help tiny humans- who might otherwise never see a pediatric surgeon. I get to change lives. That's the dream. I am living the dream. And I am over the moon about it or I-I would be, but you are ruining it for me, First with your whining, And now with your fake, smiley, passive-aggressive enthusiasm.- You are ruining Africa for me."  
"I - I'm not, but this isn't my dream, Arizona." Callie said.  
"You are!"  
"Okay. Fine. I don't want you to go to Africa. Okay? And I do want to be with you. Okay? And I never asked you to go to Africa. So I'm really trying here." Callie yelled and some people in the waiting area turned their heads to see what was going on.  
"I'm going to miss my plane. Let's go."  
"Oh, god. No!" Callie shook her head and froze.  
"You're ruining this for me, And I don't want to do this like this." Arizona yelled "I'm sorry"

"You're sorry? You're sorry?" Callie repeated. "It's three years. People have babies and get married in three years."  
"I can We can- we can do this." Arizona stammered trying to persuade Callie "We can- we can figure this out. You stay here -and be happy. And I'll go there and be happy."  
"If you get on that plane, if you go without me, if you leave me, we are done." Callie said and stopped. "Do you hear me? We are over!"  
Arizona who had stopped after she had noticed that Callie had stopped following her to the gate and turned around. "Callie, I think we are already over we are standing In the middle of an airport screaming at each other. I have to go now."  
"And I have to get back to the hospital." Callie said watching Arizona walk away while her pager kept beeping.

 _"Mommy, are you going to be there for my school play?" A small girl with blonde hair asked when her mother walked into the kitchen. She bid her lips anxiously awaiting her mother's reply.  
The prompt reply her mother gave her was just what Meredith had expected. "I told you over and over again, Meredith, I'm a surgeon I can't come to your school play because I have to work. Lives depend on me. Do you want someone to die because I watch your little play?" Her mother was a surgeon.  
"I really want you to be there". Meredith begged. She had a big role in the school play about the four seasons. She'd play the sun and she wanted her mother to see her shine.  
"I know Meredith, but you need to understand that there are things that are more important than school plays?"_ Ellis asked and Meredith understood that she'd probably not be able or willing to make it.  
 _"Can daddy be there?" the little girl wanted to know. She missed her daddy who had always spent the afternoons with her when they were still living in Seattle.  
"Do you remember what I told you about daddy?" Ellis asked in a strict tone and looked at Meredith who nodded.  
"Yes, that he's in Seattle and we are in Boston."_

* * *

Lexie saw Mark playing with Maria in the cafeteria. She was lonely, messed up and she needed to talk to somebody. "I'm screwed up. Really screwed up. Well, not as screwed up as Meredith, but screwed up" she said tacking a sip from the straw in her chocolate milk.  
Mark looked up. He was confused. Whenever Lexie had babysat Christopher and Maria she had been organized and put together, right now she was neither, she was a mess. He decided to ask "What happened?"  
"I had sex. Last week I had sex." Lexie said "George and I had sex."  
"I'm your teacher" Mark's eyes widened "Not appropriate. I'm supposed to be your teacher and I'm pretty sure if I told you something like this it'd be called sexual harassment and I'd have to watch that awfully boring video again."  
"You asked. I slept with someone who looks like my dad when he was his age. How messed up is it?" Lexie asked.  
"Did you enjoy it? You don't look like you did and you do look like someone who usually enjoys sex." Mark smirked. It wasn't flirtatious, but still seemed quick at repartee.  
"No, I cried. I cried when we had sex." Lexie admitted and watched Mark take a huge bite from one of the sandwiches in front of him.  
"Yeah, crying always kills the mood. And yeah, you are messed up. All Grey's are messed up. Really messed up." Mark said and offered Lexie a sandwich Alex Karev had gotten for him at the far end of town "Want a sandwich?"  
"Yeah." Lexie nodded and grabbed one of Mark's tuna sandwiches. "I should talk to George. Make things right"

* * *

"Callie?" Meredith wondered when she reached the room she had been paged to. This wasn't the hernia repair on a newborn the new peds attending had talked to her about the day before. Newborns usually didn't have injuries like that and were a lot smaller. The boy who was lying in bed had been brought in the night before, all the tissue around his ankle was gone and she was able to see the bones. Meredith wondered what had happened to him.  
"Yeah, bad luck, Grey, you're stuck with me today, I needed somebody capable and you will hate me because I'm not in a good mood. Arizona left. She just left me to …" Callie said passively aggressive.  
"… take care of sick African kids." Meredith laughed without noticing that this statement angered Callie even more.  
"Yeah, isn't she wonderful?" Callie asked overly excited. "Anyway, we need to work out a plan so this little guy can keep his leg. He got stuck between two parts of a carousel yesterday evening and was admitted. They got him stabilized and brought him up here. I already paged Sloan because this is certainly his level of expertise."  
"What about a graft?" Meredith asked  
"Wouldn't work, we don't have time" Callie said "that's what Sloan said"  
"I'm sorry about the other day, I really am" Meredith said and looked at Callie.  
"It's fine Grey, just look at the file. This is really screwed up."  
Meredith looked at the patient and his wound and couldn't help but think 'Damn, this looks bad.' They both walked out of the room and after she voiced her thought, Callie agreed "It does and every option I could think of so far involves months of pain and staying in the hospital in order to save his leg."  
"Maybe because it's necessary." Meredith said "Sometimes we need to feel the pain in order to get better." Callie nodded. She felt the pain. Her girlfriend was on a plane to Africa. Her ex girlfriend.

"So any ideas? I don't want this boy to lose his leg. He's too young to lose something like this. Something worth fighting for" Callie said and looked at Meredith, who was still studying the x-rays. "I promised my attending I would find a way for him to keep it. He wanted to amputate." Meredith nodded. She had seldom seen an ankle injury as extensive as this one. The boy's ankle had been caught inside the carousel and some flesh had been ripped off before someone had stopped the carousel's turn.  
Meredith remembered one of the cases her mother had worked on. She had watched a tape with a similar case during maternity leave. She tried to remember what her mother had done exactly and went over the procedure in her memory. They had broken bone, extracted a part of the bone in order to be able to connect whatever soft tissue that was still available and had used an Ilizarov device to extend the bones back to their original length. It was a long shot. "We could extract a piece of the bone. This way we can try to work with the viable tissue he has left. We could close the open wound, it heals and we insert an ISKD advice until the leg is as long as the other again or we go with an exterior approach. But you told me you don't like the Ilizarov device, so I don't know what you'd prefer. But given the muscle and tissue damage I'm not sure whether this could work. The muscle and everything is going to be necrotic before we can graft new tissue or anything properly if we don't extract parts of his bone."  
Callie looked at Mark „Can this work, Dr. Sloan?"  
Mark nodded "It's an option. He'd have to stay in the hospital for months, but he'd keep his leg and it's a little safer than attempting to graft the muscle. I'd go with the internal approach too."  
Callie looked at the scans again and nodded "Fine, I think we will go with the internal method. I'm going to talk to the parents and we are going to meet and I'll talk to my attending and a pediatric surgeon if we can go down this road."  
"He certainly has to get off the carousel for a while." Sloan said and Meredith looked at him and wondered whether he had been talking to her mother before she had died.

April Kepner had been thinking about it all week. Their conversations had played over and over in her head and she was happy that the attending she thought of as her mentor was back. "Dr. Shepherd, I thought about what we talked about the other day, well last week... because you haven't been here this week"  
"Oh, did you?" Derek wondered assuming that she was talking about a case they had worked on.  
"And I was wondering whether you would like to come to a meeting with me." April continued and Derek drew the wrong conclusion and stated confused "You are an alcoholic…?"  
"Oh no, no, no, I'm not, I wasn't talking about a meeting like this" April stuttered. "I don't. I was… I was talking about my prayer circle. We meet on Fridays and I really enjoy to share my passion for Jesus"  
As she said this, Mark Sloan walked over to them pretending to hold a chart and to have sought Derek for a consult "Kepner, go away, I have to talk to Dr. Shepherd for a minute."  
"Sure, sure. Yeah, Dr. Sloan, absolutely" April said and left the two surgeons by themselves.  
Mark leaned over to Derek and whispered "Share your passion for Jesus? Hilarious, when did you become passionate about Jesus?"  
"Thank you for saving me, anyway." Derek whispered back and padded Mark's should.  
"She's nuts, isn't she?" Mark said and looked at Derek.  
"Maybe. I don't know."  
"If she isn't ,she should get late, she'd be less tense." Mark said  
Derek's eyes widened. "Don't do it."  
"I wasn't going to" Mark assured him and handed over the chart he wanted Derek to look at "I'm going to spend quite a bit of time with your wife now. Have fun. You can scrub in with us if you want to."

Mark looked at his best friend's wife who had just started to wash her hands. It had been a while since they had been in an OR at the same time. If he was honest, he couldn't remember. Thinking about it he assumed that it must have been the day Derek's mother had visited Seattle for the first time, but he wasn't quite sure. "This is like the good old times, Grey. You, me and a scalpel. We haven't been in an OR together in a while."  
"Yes and I have to say you are a lot more pleasant to work with now. –that you are not hitting on me. And now I can tell you that I really look forward to having sex" Meredith laughed while looking at Callie who ran hastily passed her. "Grey, can you take over for me for a second?"  
Meredith nodded and Mark starred at her "What is it with you Grey's and sex today? And when did I become the expert on sex deprived Grey sisters?"  
"You are McSteamy, you know everything about curing sex deprivation."  
„Is she?" Mark asked as they both watched Callie throwing up into a trash can that was supposed to be for medical waste.  
Meredith starred at the trash can and nodded „It looks like it, I haven't seen anyone puking like this in a year. I hated the smell of the disinfectants. But it passes; she should be fine in 10 minutes. So how was L.A.?"  
Mark and Addison had visited friends from medical school while Derek had been in the hospital figuring out how to save Izzie. "We spend a lot of time at the beach and I have to say there's a lot of competition down there. People look too great. I'd be out of business." Mark smirked.  
Meredith let out a short giggle."Are you really worried about that all those wannabe actresses don't need boob jobs anymore or rhinoplasties?"  
"Believe it or not, but I prefer reconstructive surgeries. It's more challenging and ultimately more rewarding." Mark answered in a serious tone. It was something he wouldn't have done when he first came to Seattle. He wasn't the cocky arrogant manwhore he used to be.  
"You really changed." Meredith pointed out.  
Mark looked at her and said "I didn't. I just look at my past in a different way now. If you let go of all the wasted opportunity it gets easier."  
"Letting go helps?" Meredith wondered and was reminded of all the negativity she had always felt thinking about her childhood.  
Mark nodded "It really does. You should try it."  
"Fine guys, I'm back. We can continue. Let's make sure this little fella is keeping his leg." Callie told them after she had cleaned up herself.

* * *

"Meredith?" Thatcher looked surprised when he opened his front door. His daughter never came over for an unannounced visit and she looked like she was uncomfortable. He was instantly reminded of their first encounter after 20 years.  
"Hello Thatch, I need you to tell me something and I need you to be honest about it because I thought about it for weeks and I really need to know the truth. Did you and mom want to have a child when you had me or did you get married out of a sense of obligation? Because it doesn't seem like you ever laughed each other" Meredith said and looked at him.  
"Meredith we loved you. From the moment I knew you existed I loved you and I thought I loved Ellis. We were young when we got married. We were young and didn't know what love was about" He replied.  
"I see. Did Ellis want to have a child?" Meredith asked. If the answer was yes she had to find out more about the adoption because she needed to understand why Ellis had kept her.  
Thatcher's eyes teared up and he nodded "Yes. We wanted to have a child and the day you were born, there are no words strong enough to describe the pride and the joy I felt when I held you in my arms. I'm sure you felt that way when Christopher was born. You were a gift, to both of us. You were the happiness that made me cry."  
"So what happened after that?" Meredith bid her lips. They both knew that Meredith's childhood had been lonely and Thatcher knew that he was partially to blame for that.  
He sighed "Your mother changed when she became a doctor. Everything changed the day she set the first step into that hospital. In the beginning Richard and she were friends, we used to meet for dinner every few weeks and then she started to spend longer hours in the hospital, sometimes she wouldn't come home for days at a time and I had to take you to the hospital. You learnt to read while she was doing her first solo lung transplant. I turned a blind eye to the looks she and Richard Webber exchanged because we had you."  
"Did you know she was pregnant when she left?" Meredith looked at her and his eyes widened. No, Ellis had never told him, but he couldn't have been the father.  
"No and it couldn't have been mine. It's Richard's isn't it."  
"I suppose" Meredith sighed and looked apologetic. She knew she was ripping up old wounds. "Why did I always feel like my mom didn't want me?"  
"I don't know Meredith. I guess she found something she loved more than me. But I can assure you that at no point in time she ever did not want you. She sent me a video of your first school play." Thatcher said-  
"She wasn't there." Meredith said. She remembered how often she had begged her mother to be there, but she hadn't been at her play.  
"One of her interns filmed it for her. That's when Susan found out about you. You can come in and watch it, I kept it. It was the last thing I saw of you for 20 years. Do you remember what it was about?" Thatcher asked.  
"No"  
"Life cycles. How the seasons change. Want to watch it?" Thatcher said and opened the door for Meredith and Christopher.  
"Alright. Let's watch it. "

* * *

 _One thing you learn during the first year of residency is that you can't cling to the past. You make one mistake and the patient dies. You can't cling to the past, because no matter how tightly you hold on, it's already gone. We are not the prom queens, the valedictorians or drinking buddies anymore. We are surgeons, we ride the carousel and we can't get off. We lose touch, we forget about people, and sometimes we are surprised to find out that the people we thought forgot about us were right behind us all along._

* * *

 _I'm so sorry this didn't include Mer/Der's big reunion, I thought it was in chapter 11 because Derek is back now, but you will get to read what you've been waiting for in chapter 12..._


	14. Chapter 12&13

_One day later than usual because my mom came over for a visit, but you get two chapters at once... so have fun..._

 _Patsy: Thanks for the first review and pointing out that chapter 11 had disappeared! There are going to be two two chapter postings today and saturday next week and afterwards the chapter numbers are going to be alligned. Hope you are going to enjoy these two!_  
 _Melanie: As I said, the wedding is way down the road, so you'll have to wait for it quite a bit..._  
 _Susan: There's going to be a lot more about Meredith's childhood to come (wherever it adds to the storyline of the present)_  
 _Jill: Time to feed the beast ;)_  
 _Melinda: Glad yo enjoy it!_  
 _Shelley: Rollercoaster ride ahead for everyone._  
 _Carolyn: Enjoy the romance._  
 _Dora: More on the pregnancy a little later and on Meredith's childhood._  
 _Kiley: No, Jackson is not the half brother. They are about the same age +/- 2 years in this story..._  
 _Ellen: Mer will be busy for sure, but just wait and see... lots happening in 12/13_  
 _Chrissy: Get ready! Lots of romance ahead..._

* * *

 **Chapter 12**

 _There's a stage you go through in childbirth and it's the toughest part. It's called the transition stage. You've been pushing so hard and so long. You're exhausted, spent hours on it and there's nothing to show for all of your effort. During this transition stage, it feels like you can't go on but it's because you're very nearly there._

"He's crying, isn't he? " Derek wondered when they heard a noise coming out of the baby monitor's speaker. The second Meredith had come home they had started to take off each other's clothes. They did not want to waste another second. Even though Meredith was tired, she wanted this, no, she needed this. "Yes" Meredith nodded "This is the 100th time this is happening. It's like he has radar that goes off every time his parents are in bed naked."  
"We should think about having sex in the living room if that's the case" Derek smirked and put his boxers back on.  
"It's not funny Derek. I might never get to have sex ever again." Meredith sighed and pulled the blanket over her head. "I'm 29. I'm too young to never have sex again. This baby is destroying my sex life. There should be warning signs on condoms. Like 'If you don't use this, you are never going to sleep or have sex again.'"  
"And we even used condoms. Remember the glow in the dark ones?" Derek teased her.  
"I'm going to check on him." Meredith said after putting on her dressing gown.

Meredith walked back into their bed room holding their son. He seemed happy and had stopped crying immediately after Meredith had picked him up. "Hello little guy." Derek whispered into Christopher's ear and after that he told his wife "It's like he doesn't want us to have sex, like he knows, well yeah, right this second my parents found 10 minutes to you know…" Meredith giggled and added "and he thinks 'No I don't want another sibling. Screw them! I'm going to cry'"  
"We are having one top-notch baby with whom we are in love. It's a head-over-heels, but it's a lot like dating my high school crush because I pay for everything and all we do is hold hands." Derek joked and they both lay in their bed with Christopher in between.  
Meredith looked at Derek and giggled. She remembered the advice Addison had given her and decided to try it. "We could try your office tomorrow. He's going to be in daycare and I'm going to be very prepared and you can lock the door."  
"We are scheduling sex now." Derek laughed.  
"We are scheduling sex." Meredith repeated and raised her eyebrows. "We used to be so good at this" 'Desperate times called for desperate measures' she thought to herself.  
"Good sex, hospital sex." Derek whispered into her ears while she held Christopher.

* * *

"Again?" Mark wondered and looked at Callie who had just thrown up during surgery again. The smell in the OR made her nauseous and impossible for her to conceal her pregnancy. She was miserable about Arizona leaving and she felt horrible because she couldn't stop vomiting.  
"You are not running a fever, but you look like shit and I'm inclined to think that I know what this feels like." Addison said and looked at Callie "Are you?"  
"Yes." Callie nodded.  
"Does Dr. Robbins know?" Lexie wanted to know. "She doesn't, does she?"  
"No."  
"Alright. But you should go and see me. Whatever I prescribed for Grey for the morning sickness really helped and you need prenatal vitamins." Addison said softly.  
"I don't need is a babysitter." Callie got defensive. She didn't want to let anyone in after what had happened at the airport. Her heart was scared.  
"Well, I don't want to be smart Callie, but you might need one in 9 months." Lexie reminded her and Callie shot her a deathly stare. "Shut up and don't tell anyone yet."  
"I won't." Lexie nodded.  
"You don't want to ask questions about who the dad might be?" Callie snapped.  
"I don't think it's any of my business, Callie." Lexie muttered looking at Callie. "It's nobody's business"

* * *

"Am I ever getting out of here?" The young boy they had taken to surgery the day before asked Meredith when she entered the room "The other doctor said I'd be here for at least 6 months."  
"I'm afraid I can't tell you anything different because if we want to make sure that you keep your leg, we don't have a choice." Meredith said with a soft smile on her face "I can't sugarcoat it. You are going to be in a lot of pain and you won't be allowed to walk or have fun and it's going to suck because the TV program in the hospital isn't that good, but if everything goes according to plan, you will be able to walk again after that."  
"Can't you just cut it off, it hurts so much?" the boy asked her.  
"Well, if we cut it off now, the pain might remain, it does so for a lot of amputees and you'd never be able to walk again the way you did before, you'd have to come in for follow ups every few months until you are a grown up because your prosthetic would need to be adjusted to your growth." Meredith said.  
"I hate carousels." The boy said.  
"So do I." Meredith said and sat down on the chair beside his bed.  
"Why do you hate carousels?" the little boy wondered.  
"It's a stupid reason." Meredith sighed "And I'm sorry but I have to go now. But if you follow the doctors' orders you are hopefully going to be fine." It really was a stupid reason. The last time she rode a carousel she ended up being stuck in a crappy apartment for 6 months.

* * *

Meredith bit her lip as she touched the door knob to Derek's office. She knew he'd be waiting for her in there and she knew that she had waited for this moment ever since Christopher had been born. She took a deep breath and walked in. For a second she thought it would be funny to imitate April's frisky voice. "I heard you needed me for a consult, Dr. Shepherd."  
Derek looked a little bit confused, but decided to go along "Indeed Dr. Grey. I have a very urgent procedure scheduled you might want to participate in." He said slowly untying her scrub pants, he bit his lips and whispered "But you might want to step closer because you can't get proper visualization from here."  
Meredith kissed his neck and teased him. "I wasn't aware that we needed visuals now. You are experienced enough to go in blind."  
"I certainly have, but the more visualization, the better." Derek said pulling Meredith's scrub top over her head. His face moved down and he kissed her belly. "I want to scan every inch of your body."  
"You better lose those scrubs now, I can't take this any longer, we didn't have sex in months, I really need this, so no more dirty talk just…."

"God I missed this." Derek said. They both rested on his couch.  
"So did I." Meredith nodded "It's like we don't even have time to be ourselves anymore. Do I have sex hair?"  
"If I did my job right." Derek smirked.

While he had only eyes for her, she noticed a scan on the wall. It was a brain tumor. A beautiful brain tumor. She wondered whether she would get to scrub in on this procedure. "Woah, that tumor looks amazing. She's beautiful."  
"Don't look at those scans. They are …" Derek insisted, but it was too late as she had already read the note on the margin.  
"Oh my god, You operated on Izzie's brain tumor? You never said a word! She has a brain tumor. I was right."  
"You knew she had a brain tumor?" Derek asked surprised.  
"No, I had a suspicion and we drew blood and the markers kind of confirmed that she had cancer." Meredith admitted.  
"Who is we? You can get fired for something like this Meredith!" Derek said angry "Ordering labs and drawing blood without the patient's consent or knowledge!"  
"Alex did ask for her consent to draw blood. It was just a false flag operation. We had her consent to run her blood." Meredith corrected him  
"This is the most irresponsible thing you have done in a long time!" Derek said "If you find something, you tell the patient and an attending. You are not a real surgeon yet."  
"And you didn't tell me that you operated on my friend. You spend an entire week in L.A. and you didn't mention a word about this. You could have told me in private. I'm your wife." Meredith said. They never had had secrets like this before.  
"and I'm her doctor. My patients trust me. She obviously didn't want anyone to know. It was the hospital that requested me for a consult, not Izzie." Derek said.  
"And I'm your wife and Izzie is my friend."  
"She did not tell you."

* * *

"Your hair looks messy. Don't tell me McDreamy and you did the nasty nasty in his office!" Cristina said when Meredith met her in the hallway.  
"We did and it was great. Mind blowing. It was so good" Meredith said ecstatic, but her voice became less enthusiastic as she continued "And afterwards we got into this huge fight because it turns out that the patient he operated on in L.A. was Izzie, Izzie Stevens."  
"Izzie really had a brain tumor?" Cristina swallowed.  
"Yes, I guess she read Alex' text message and went for a check up." Meredith nodded.  
"Why did you even suspect it?" Cristina wondered "I mean it's not like Izzie was acting wird."  
"She was acting weird. The neurosurgeon at St. Ambrose did and Sam contacted Derek." Meredith said "We just drew her blood and checked the markers"  
Cristina nodded and added „and he told you that this was irresponsible and he is a 100% right about this. We can't do this without the patient's consent."  
"Are you on my side or on his now?" Meredith wondered "and you shouldn't be the one lecturing me on bending the rules."  
"I'm on medicine's side." Cristina said. "So what's her prognosis?"  
"Metastatic stage 4 cancer. She's having chemo now. That's all he'd tell me."  
"That sucks."  
"Should I tell Alex?" Meredith wondered "I should, should I?"

Their conversation didn't go unnoticed and George walked up to them wondering "Izzie has cancer?"  
"Well, now you might as well just tell him." Cristina said looking at Meredith.  
Meredith nodded "Yes, she has cancer, but we are not supposed to know, so just keep quiet. Understood?"  
"Yes."

* * *

"You are back." Her carousel patient said when she walked into his room. He put away his magazine and looked at her.  
"I am. Want some?" Meredith said and offered the boy some of her potato chips.  
"Am I allowed to eat those?" the boy looked at her.  
"I wouldn't know why you shouldn't be." Meredith said and handed over the bag to him.  
"So why are you here? Is it because you feel bad for me?" the boy wondered.  
"No, I thought you might want company. We could bond over our dislike of carousels." Meredith laughed.  
"That would be an odd thing to bond over. Are you sure you are a doctor?" the black haired boy with wavy hair asked.  
"I'm working here, look at my ID-tag." Meredith showed him the ID card they had been given on their first day as an intern. "My husband works here too and his best friend is going to make sure that the scars on your leg won't look too awful."  
"You know a lot of doctors." The boy said surprised.  
"I do." Meredith nodded and ate another potato chip.  
The boy looked at her. "Don't you think the hospital is a scary place?"  
"I don't. I grew up here. My mom was a surgeon and I spend a lot of time in hospitals as a child. The outside world is a lot scarier to me." Meredith told the boy and realized that it was actually true. The hospital was a place she felt home at.  
"Is that the reason you don't like carousels?" her patient kept interrogating.  
"Maybe." Meredith smiled and walked to the door.  
"Maybe is all I get?"  
"Well, you have 6 months to find out more. I have to go back to work." She said and left the room. This wouldn't be the last time she saw him.

* * *

When Meredith walked into the house she knew they'd continue their fight. While she had managed to avoid Derek at work there was no way to avoid him at home. He looked at her and put the towel on top on the kitchen counter. She looked at him and said firmly "You went to L.A. for a week and never told me why. I'm your wife. I'm entitled to find out a little more about your life than normal people. Especially if I have to take care of our infant son on my own while you were away."  
"Don't bring Christopher into this!" Derek said.  
" He's been moving and rolling around a whole lot more this week. He always seemed to be looking for you. He knows when we are away" Meredith continued.  
"Meredith, if I'm away for the week, I'm away. I'm doing the best I can. Don't use our son to guilt trip me."  
"Derek, I'm supposed to be a surgeon. While you were away I had to take care of Christopher and I couldn't have done it without Alex and Lexie."Meredith looked at him and neither one said anything.  
"Why don't you go back to him? Because he's apparently who you discuss important topics with." Derek told her and walked out of the kitchen into the bed room. Meredith followed him.  
"Derek, I discussed Izzie's brain tumor with him because he was in love with her and I went to get help from him when I needed help because he's my friend. I didn't come to you because you told me I was seeing zebras and I missed you. Staying here without you around is just more than I can handle. This doesn't feel like home yet. It's a beautiful house, but it isn't home yet. We haven't had… "  
"…sex?" Derek smirked and moved his lower lip seductively.  
"No!"  
"Want to change that?" Derek tried to persuade her.  
"No, right now I want to discuss this" Meredith insisted.  
"but maybe we can have make up sex a little later" Derek suggested. Meredith rolled her eyes and smiled. She realized this boldness was one of the many things she loved about Derek.  
"Fine, I think I like make up sex. But we have to discuss this now. So what bothers you? You know what bothers me."  
"Well it's surprising that you don't talk to me about her brain tumor. But I'm just the world renowned neurosurgeon, not a resident. She would have had a way better chance if I had done this surgery weeks ago." Derek said and gave Meredith an opportunity to explain what had happened. "We found out the day she left. I wouldn't have made a difference."

 _Transition is movement from one part of a life to a whole new one. And it can feel like one long, scary, dark tunnel. But you have to come out the other side because what's been waiting there might be glorious._

* * *

 **Chapter 13**

 _Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That's not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that's what life needs to be – perfect – and that if it's not that, it's all screwed up. It's not. You don't need the fences, you don't even need the house. You need to live the life you want for yourself and you need the people you care about around you. Life means struggle and fight. Those are the only thing about life that is real._

"How long are you going to be mad at me for? Because all this self righteous smugness, I can't take it." Meredith asked when she saw Derek's angry face the next evening. She had avoided him at work all day.  
"How long are you going to judge me for keeping patient-doctor confidentiality?" he wondered and she understood that he had a point.  
"I get that Derek" Meredith looked in Derek's eyes "but in this house you are not Derek Shepherd the neurosurgeon, you are Derek Shepherd my husband and I really hoped that we wouldn't keep secrets like that from one another."  
"You are keeping secrets from me all the time!" Derek said. Meredith was surprised to hear that. She had never kept a secret like this from him  
"Am I?" she asked.  
"You didn't even tell me that you stayed up at night for three straight weeks because our son was teething. I had Karev telling me how little attention I was paying to you." He yelled.  
Meredith looked shocked. She wouldn't have thought that Alex would confront Derek about this. It had been her choice to give Derek enough room for his job and his work, but somehow this was not what Derek wanted. "That's not a secret." She insisted "You would have noticed if you hadn't been at the hospital half those nights or away to operate on my friend. Sorry if I take care of our child. I don't want to be my mother."  
"Meredith, I don't want you to be sleep deprived. We are in this together. You are acting like your mother if you want to do it all by yourself." Derek pointed out and for a moment Meredith was unable to form any words in her head and kept starring at her husband "The next time something like this happens, just tell me that you stayed up all night because our son was in pain and tell me if you think that one of your friends has a brain tumor. I'm kind of an expert on that area. And I might be able to help you."  
"So how long are you going to be mad at me for?" Meredith wondered. Derek's face changed from angry to rather friendly.  
"I'm not mad at you." He said and walked up to her. "All those things you do, it's what makes you you. You are compassionate with your patients and you are thoughtful and you care about me and I love you no matter what."  
"And I understand that you couldn't tell me." Meredith said.

* * *

"It's a nice place, how did you find it?" Lexie wondered. They sat in a restaurant near the docks and were able to look at the harbor and the ferryboats. Lexie couldn't quite understand why Derek and Meredith were so obsessed with them, but they looked nice illuminated at night.  
"My mom said that my dad used to take her here." George answered.  
"How's your mom?" Lexie wondered as she knew how hard it could be for someone to move on after their spouse died. Her father had changed completely since Susan had died.  
"She's getting better." George replied. The truth was that he didn't really know how his mother was doing as he had hardly found the time to visit her, but this was not the appropriate place or time to discuss this.  
"That's good. I'm very sorry about the kiss. It was not my…" Lexie said, but George interrupted her "It's fine I forgot about it." He stammered. "Well, it was memorable, but it was awkward, you are by no means a bad kisser"  
"Yes, I understand. My dad is doing it too, the rambling thing." Lexie bit her lips realizing it was the most stupid thing she could have said given the situation.  
"Ellis thought I was Thatcher when she was admitted to the hospital." George said "I had to examine her and it was sort of difficult. Because I had this huge crush on Meredith…"  
"that's something you shouldn't discuss on a date!" Lexie interrupted him.  
"We are on a date?" George wondered surprised.  
Lexie's facial expression changed. Her face froze and starring at George she said "Oh my god, I totally assumed it was because you asked me whether I wanted to have dinner with you and usually this is a …"  
"Sorry, it's a stupid thing to do. I … am… sorry…" George said trying to calm her down, but Lexie realized that she couldn't cope with what she had just heard. "I guess I should go." She excused herself and rushed out of the restaurant leaving George alone at their table.

She ran outside and saw that one of the ferryboats was going to leave in 2 minutes and decided that it would be a good escape route. She stood at the bow of the ferry and cried. She was alone. All alone. At this second she knew she needed a quick fix, something that would numb the pain.

* * *

"April invited your husband to her prayer group" Jackson teased Meredith when he saw her in the locker room the next morning.  
Meredith rolled her eyes and sighed "Seriously?" Derek hadn't told her, but truthfully she thought that he was too full of himself to even notice that April was flirting with him.  
"She thinks they have some sort of spiritual connection and he thought she was talking about AA" Jackson laughed. One of his interns had witnessed the conversation and had told him everything about it. Apparently it was all over the hospital in one version or the other.  
Meredith couldn't hide her grin "That's … umm…"  
"Hilarious?" Jackson suggested.  
"I was going for delusional, but hilarious covers it as well. What did Derek say?" Meredith wondered.  
Jackson laughed "He was saved by the bell. Sloan told her to leave before she could interrogate him further."  
"Good, because Derek only believes in one God, himself" Meredith made a snarky comment. Part of her was still mad at Derek, but she loved his arrogance too. "and Kepner needs to get laid."  
"She's a virgin. A Christian virgin." Jackson reminded Meredith. April's spirituality had been a constant source of mockery ever since the merger, but Meredith had missed most of it due to her maternity leave and by the time she had started to work again people had accepted it.  
"The whole no sex before marriage thing?" Meredith asked and added "I really hope she realizes that he's just not into her"  
"Yeah. I'll talk to her."

* * *

Days went by and Meredith managed to push the scary thoughts of Izzie aside. Both she and Cristina avoided talking to Alex, who became increasingly aware of it. Meredith had been avoiding Alex since she had found out about Izzie. She just didn't know how to tell him. "Meredith, what's the matter? You haven't talked to me in days! Ever since Derek is back it feels like you've been running from me." Alex said after he had cornered her in a supply closet.  
"Do you really want to know, Alex?" Meredith asked and bid her lip waiting for an answer. He nodded and she started to explain. "You were right Alex, Izzie has cancer, stage 4 metastatic cancer."  
"Good, and I hope she dies!" he said an looked at her.  
"You don't mean this!" Meredith said. She saw that tears were in his eyes and he tried hard to retain his composure.  
"Yes I do! She has stage 4 cancer and she doesn't even tell us." Alex yelled and threw his chart onto the ground. "She doesn't answer my calls, she doesn't reply to my emails. Nothing! She just vanished from my life. She deserves what she's getting"  
"Alex."  
"How long have you know?" He snapped as she touched his arm  
"4 days. I didn't know how to tell you and Derek and I were fighting about it because I was mad, no I am mad that he didn't tell me that he was the one who operated on her tumor." Meredith told him and they both sat down on the floor.  
"It's what he went to L.A. for, isn't it?" he asked. It was an unnecessary question as he already knew the answer, but he needed to hear it again in order to process everything.  
"Yes." Meredith nodded "Derek operated on her tumor."  
"Does she have a chance?" he asked shyly, but this was a question Meredith didn't have an answer for.  
She breathed out loudly and sighed "I don't know. Derek won't let me look at her medical files. I just wanted to let you know what I know."  
"Thank you. Are you up for Joes after work? I really need to get a drink!" Alex asked "I just want a drink"  
"Sure! Depending on how my first day on general is going I might need one as well." Meredith said. She hadn't talked to Richard since their confrontation about the adoption and from everything Lexie had told her Richard was still incredibly mad about the entire story. He was the second person she had to stop avoiding today.

* * *

Meredith stood back behind all the other residents during grand rounds. The Chief explained the course of treatment for an open hernia repair on a paint "The direct approach would provide the best support." He concluded, but Meredith did not agree so she spoke up. Her mother had revolutionized laparoscopic techniques and she knew a lot about them. "Why don't we use a laparoscopic approach? It would decrease the risk for post op infection."  
"Because I say so, Dr. Grey. Prep the patient, Quo." The Chief said and left the room without taking a second look at Meredith.

Meredith hurried to catch up with him and stepped into his way. She had managed to face Alex, this would be easier. "Dr. Webber, I'm not my mother, you know that better than anyone. You gave me crap in there that you and I both knew I did not deserve. So why don't you tell me the reason you are running around like this and behave crappy toward me and my sister. My sister whose only fault was that her last name is Grey." Meredith said really fast. The words were flying out of her mouth easily. "So, as your resident I ask you respectfully to please cut all of this crap. I didn't know. What she did to you wasn't fair, but what she did to me wasn't fair either. So, very respectfully, cut the crap."  
"I didn't know and she didn't tell me." Richard admitted "I'm not a bad guy."  
"I didn't say you were. I never realized she had a kid and I was there for the whole pregnancy." Meredith said "And I really didn't want to keep this from you. I only found out before Christopher was born."  
"I think she told me." Richard said and Meredith was left puzzled for a second.  
"What do you mean?" She asked.  
"I think she told me. Or she tried to." He said "I visited her in her room, the day she died. We were talking about the life she would have had if I had chosen her and when I said that we would have had kids she told me that we did. I thought she was referring to you. I never realized that…"  
"… there was someone else." Meredith nodded  
"Yeah, she left Seattle and never looked back." He said.  
"We were in Boston and you were in Seattle." Meredith nodded again. It were two sides of the same story.  
He took her hand and told her "You know I would have picked her if she had told me about the pregnancy."  
Meredith knew that it wouldn't have made a difference. Her mother would have left him after he had left her in the park. "And that would have been the second guy who stayed with her out of a sense of obligation for a child. She didn't want that. She wanted to be a surgeon. And she wanted to be loved by someone because of her personality, not…"  
He smiled and looked at her "You are a lot like her, Meredith. Probably more than you even realize. You are going to be a remarkable surgeon one day, I can still teach you, if you want to. The offer is still on the table, you know."

 _"Richard, you are here!" Ellis said surprised when her old friend walked up to her. She was holding a glass of champagne and it was one of the rare occasions she wore a dress.  
"I needed to see you" he swallowed and ordered a club soda from the bar.  
"How is Adele?" Ellis asked. Her eyes were piercing and they both remained silent for a brief moment.  
"She's uhmm… she's fine." He said.  
"Good." Ellis nodded  
"You did incredibly well up there. Your research, it's amazing. You can be incredibly proud of everything you have done since…. you… left" Richard tried to compliment her. It was the first time they talked since he had broken up their affair at the carousel.  
"Thank you. I never thought I would win, I …" Ellis said and looked at her trophy.  
"You always had it in you. You wanted it with every cell of your body. You were breathing for it." He smiled "How's Meredith?"  
"She's a bright little girl. She's in third grade now. Do you..?" Ellis paused.  
"… have children?"Richard added and shook his head. "No. It just never was the right time."  
"Yeah, timing was never on your side" Ellis nodded "You know we could have… "  
"… we could have, but now you won a Harper Avery. It's everything you ever wanted."He said with a proud smile on his face.  
"It's almost everything I ever wanted." Ellis nodded "Isn't it crazy? If we had gone through with it, you'd be here with me tonight. We'd have a drink and we'd toast to our amazing life and our outstanding achievements. We'd toast to our children,"  
"we'd have children" Richard nodded.  
"… well isn't it nice to think so?" she asked "Didn't we almost have it all?"  
"Congratulations Ellis, you really deserve this. I have to go." He said.  
"Yeah, you always have to go." Ellis said and went back to her Chief of surgery. _

* * *

Meredith walked over to Joe's bar after work. As neither of her friends had shown up yet she sat down at the bad and looked at the bar tender. "Straight tequila, please"  
"Wow, you haven't been here in a long time" Joe said and poured her drink.  
"Well, pregnant or breast-feeding women are typically not the guests you'd want in your bar. And every time I was here you weren't. But that's over now. Where have you been?" Meredith wondered.  
"Kids keep you busy." He said and Meredith instantly remembered that Joe and his partner had adopted. She wasn't the only one who tried to make an impossible timeline work.  
"Hey, you are here already." Alex walked up behind her and sat down next to her.  
"I told the Chief that he was an ass." Meredith said and downed the tequila shot.  
"You have balls." Alex laughed.  
"I don't. He was being an ass because of something my mother did to him and I told him to stop. Very respectfully." Meredith said and they exchanged a look. Alex was grinning and Meredith face tried to be convincing. "So how was your day with Sloan?"  
"Sloantastic" Alex said and rolled his eyes "He was grumpy because apparently Addison hates the rain and Seattle and wants to pack up her things and move to L.A."  
"Wow." Meredith said. This came as a surprise to her.  
"Obviously she wants Mark to move too, but you know." Alex said and ended what he wanted to say.  
"I don't" Meredith admitted. She was clueless. Between the fighting, the care of a newborn and their newly revived sex life she had been too busy to discuss anyone else's life.  
"I thought you knew, Sloan must have told Shepherd" Alex said and proceeded with another topic "And Torres threw up in the OR"  
"Again?" Meredith asked in disbelief while someone behind them ordered another straight tequila.  
"Rough day?" Alex wondered looking at Cristina.  
"Yeah, stuck with Shepherd in the OR all day? Neuro and his happy smile. I want to puke. You guys are way too happy. The perfect McFamily. And Kepner, she's the worst. I take you guys made up?" she asked and looked at Meredith waiting for an answer.  
"We did." Meredith smiled.  
"Yeah, you have that freaky sex face. Why are you here?" Cristina wondered. She would have expected Meredith to be at home getting the activity matching Meredith's facial expression.  
"Because sometimes you need a change in perspective and this time it's because I needed a drink."

* * *

Alex, Cristina and Meredith weren't the only people who tried to distract themselves from their lives. Lexie walked down the halls of the hospital trying to keep herself occupied and distracted from all the misery she felt. She looked at the chart in her hand. Her patient was as old as she was. She had just started working in a big law firm and she was married. She had the life Lexie had always dreamt of having. "Grey come here, I need you in surgery" she heard Dr. Sloan yell and the second she heard it her pager went off.

The OR was covered in complete silence with only the beeping of the heart monitor being audible when Lexie asked. "Am I awkward, Dr. Sloan?"  
"Excuse me?" Mark asked and looked up from the patient in front of him. "Well, not as awkward as Kepner."  
"Am I awkward?" Lexie asked again. "Last night I went on a date, I thought it was a date, the guy asked if I wanted to have dinner, and we went to have dinner, he picked me up at home, we went to a nice restaurant, he took my coat, he pushed my chair, I thought it was a date and when I mentioned it was, he said it wasn't. But it's a date, was it? Or…"  
Mark interrupted her. The rambling reminded her of another Grey sister "That guy is an idiot and you are not weird. You are insecure, but in a cute way. If this guy doesn't see you for who you are, that's his fault. You deserve someone who sees you for whom you truly are. And now, please make the incision at 4mm I want to get out of here before sunrise."  
"Sure doctor Sloan." Lexie nodded.  
"You have to get out again, Grey. Play the field. Make him jealous! Show him that you are better than him, that you are more than he deserves, that you are the one who has her priorities straight. That you are the one worth staying in Seattle for" Mark held a little monologue.  
"Are you okay, Dr. Sloan?"  
"Sure, why wouldn't I?" Sloan dismissed the question, but sighed a little and looked at Lexie "It's just, Derek used to have this frog when we were little and I wanted to have a frog so badly, I was jealous. I even tried to put it in the microwave once. Anyway, when my parents got me a frog, I was interested in it at first, but after a while I just lost interest in it – and I was still curious what would happen if you put a frog into a microwave."  
" So you did it. What happened?" Lexie wondered  
"It exploded. A huge mess. I really thought I was interested in this frog." Mark said and Lexie looked really confused. In a matter of seconds their conversation had shifted from screwed up dates to exploded frogs.  
"It's not about the frog, is it?" Lexie asked and gave a little bit suction. While waiting for the answer Callie came into the OR telling her "Totally not about the frog, Grey. Don't keep crying. My girlfriend left me and ran off to Africa, so don't you dare to complain. Love sucks. End of story!"

* * *

When Meredith came home she saw that Derek had packed up his and her suitcase and was waiting for her in the living room "Derek, what are you doing?"  
"I was packing and now I'm waiting for you. I'm not being smug and arrogant" Derek said. He knew he had a lot to make up for. She had managed to look after Christopher all by herself and he knew that it was challenging "I try to be a good husband, I'm taking you to a nice B&B for the weekend and I'm…"  
"crazy." Meredith interrupted her "What about Christopher?"  
"I took care of that. Thatcher is going to look after him" he said. Thatcher had been happy to take in their son when he had called him.  
"You are leaving our son with my father? The guy who never cared for me for more than twenty years." Meredith asked, but the minute she said it, she realized that the season had indeed changed. "I… I went to see him. He told me that he had a tape of my first school play. Ellis sent an intern to film it and she sent it to him. He cared for me and mom, I think she loved me. I begged her to come and she refused, but she never told me she watched the tape"  
"Meredith, he cares for you now. And we need this weekend. We haven't been by ourselves since Christopher has been born. It's going to be good." Derek said softly and kissed her neck from behind.  
"Do we have to leave the hotel room?" she giggled.  
"No." he assured her.  
"Then I'm all in." Meredith smirked "Where are we going?"  
"That's going to be a surprise, but I can promise you that they have a wonderful Italian restaurant next door."  
"I don't care as long as I can sleep in. I haven't done it in a very long time."  
"I'll make sure you can't."  
"Thank you! I really have to find a way to exit mother mode once in a while."

* * *

 _And sometimes life is about survival and at the end of the day all you can say is "And I got out of there without punching anyone, kicking anyone, or breaking down in tears." Some days the small victories are all you achieve._

The door bell woke Lexie up. It had been a long night in the OR and she was grumpy to be woken up by the bell after only half an hour. She cursed Alex for forgetting his key again and was surprised it wasn't him at the door. "Callie?" she wondered and looked at her. She was standing at the front door with a suitcase and her jacket.  
"Oh, um, Grey, can I move in with you?" Callie asked and looked at Lexie.  
"That might be the rebound talking." Lexie stuttered totally misinterpreting Callie's intentions.  
Callie laughed amused and shook her head "not like that. Not that. Just until I don't see Arizona and me having sex on every corner of my apartment. I'm starting from scratch, and I don't (sighs) I don't want to do it alone. I don't want to be alone. Can't we be alone together? Isn't it easier to be single in pairs?"  
Lexie tried to understand what Callie was trying to tell her. "Is this a riddle? " she wondered.  
"No. That's pregnancy brain talking. Come on. Can I?" Callie insisted.  
Lexie opened the door. This house had been a home to anyone who wanted and needed a place to stay. "Sure. Come in."

* * *

 _next time I'm going to post another two chapters again so the chapters are alligned again... hope you enjoyed reading_


	15. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

 _Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Emergency rooms are kept in business by people who've learned that lesson the hard way. Skydivers, bullriders, people whose bold ideas often result in broken bones and smushed spleens. Surgeons are trained to deal with the fallout of the bold ideas. We pick up the pieces and do our best to fit them back together._

"Cheers! To screwed up lives!" Lexie sat down next to Callie who was eating a bag of potato chips.  
Callie looked up and laughed. "How's your life screwed up? You are the perky happy Grey. Your life is not screwed up. I'm the pregnant single whose girl friend ran for the hills"  
"I'm the second choice for everyone plus my mom died of hiccups and my dad is an alcoholic." Lexie said and looked at the label of the beer bottle she was holding.  
"Okay, you have a terrible judgement when it comes to men. That's all. Karev, O'Malley, Sloan." Callie laughed.  
"I haven't slept with Sloan." Lexie responded.  
"Not yet, anyway. Sloan is… he's… nevermind, he is…" Callie tried to articulate that Mark Sloan certainly had skills worth experiencing outside of the OR, but Lexie interrupted her "He is with Addison. He's my sister's husband's almost brother or whatever. I won't sleep with him. There's absolutely nothing…"  
"But you slept with George and Alex. I'm not judging here, we all made those mistakes." Callie looked at her, raised her eye brow and smirked.  
"You slept with both of them too?" Lexie asked.  
"Yeah, a lifetime ago. I mean, Karev, before I got married to George. George before and while we were married." Callie said and started to chew another handful of chips.  
"Who's the father? I mean, you are pregnant, you need sperm." Lexie asked and looked at Callie, who didn't know how to respond. "A sperm donor. I did IVF."  
"You know nothing about the dad?" Lexie looked at Callie in surprise "I couldn't. I couldn't never do that. I'd have to know him inside out. The father."  
"Well, he has a medical degree, he's about my age and he obviously needs the money…" Callie laughed sarcastically.  
"How do you know?" Lexie wondered.  
"Well, nobody likes to jack off into a cup unless…"

* * *

"I like this!" Meredith said when she was woken up by beams of sun light tickling her face.  
Derek had been watching her sleep for a while and nodded. "I love you."  
"I love you too, Derek. It feels so good to be here and … don't have to worry about surgeries or patients for once. Thank you!" she said and looked at him with a smile. For the first time since Christopher was born she had been able to sleep through the night.  
Derek smiled "You are welcome and on the bright side, this time doing something for you was really just doing something for me too." She got up. She was naked and Derek traced her. " I really like what I see now."  
"So do I." Meredith giggled and looked at the breakfast Derek had ordered. "Strawberry icecream? Seriously?"  
"I hope you don't run away this time" Derek teased her. "We could try to find out if the shower is soundproof before we eat our croissants or drink the fresh orange juice."  
"You want to do me the bendy thing?" Meredith giggled according to Derek it had been something they had done when they met in Vegas.  
"You are still very flexible." Derek laughed and looked at her.  
"I'm not." Meredith tried to contain her smile, but failed.  
"I beg to differ." He loved and took her hand to lead her into the shower.

"I miss Christopher and I just I don't know… he's growing up so fast." Meredith said when she looked at her phone. She was sure that he was fine, but right now she really felt an urge to call Thatcher immediately.  
"Want another one?"Derek asked out of the blue.  
"Another one? Are you on drugs?" Meredith asked and her eyes widened "We… we can't… we… I'm… I'm a resident. I can't be… do you?"  
"Meredith, I do. It's like I said the first time. I want to have all your crappy babies. But it's up to you. We can wait. Just calm down, we don't have to do anything tonight."  
Meredith nodded and walked over to him. She grabbed him from behind and whispered "We could practice".  
"Important practice." He nodded, turned around and kissed her while they both fell back onto the bed.  
"Very important practice. But you are quite good at what you are doing anyway"

* * *

A little over a month had passed by since their weekend trip and Meredith had been busy - even though this was a bit of an understatement. She had managed to juggle to find a balance between her career and her private life. Meeting her friends in the bar was a weekly thing now, something she scheduled time for in her weekly timetable. "What is this substitute daddy thing with Webber about?" Alex teased her after she had rushed into the bar after surgery. "You get to do so many solo surgeries and get to scrub in on everything interesting in general, it's insane."  
"He's mentoring me" Meredith replied.  
Cristina rolled her eyes. She knew about the adoption and the affair and reminded her "You guilted the chief into giving you private surgery lessons"  
"He offered to tutor me. No guilt" Meredith insisted and wished her friends would stop the interrogation for a second.  
"Come on, you two have been doing this for weeks now. You must have something on him. He's the Chief of surgery" Alex said. "Do you… no Shepherd would kill him!"  
"He screwed her mother." Cristina reminded Alex.  
"5 weeks" Meredith stated with a lot of context. It had been five weeks since their confrontation.  
"What?" Alex wondered.  
"It's been 5 weeks. I stay for an hour or two after work, we meet in the skills lab or in his office and we watch surgeries, he tells me all his tricks and shows me how to do the procedure and when he's doing a surgery like this I get to scrub in." Meredith said and added an overly positive "It's great."  
"You don't sound like it's great." Alex laughed. "Even though it is"  
Meredith sighed "For a surgical resident it is, but it's not so great for a mom because those two hours every day are two hours I don't get to spend with my child. He's babbling and smiling now every time you look at him and I'm afraid that I just don't see enough of him. That I slowly turn into my mother. And now I don't even get to be in the OR so often because Webber isn't doing too many surgeries these days…and he never allows me to do the easy stuff. If I screw up I'd be the scapegoat"  
"You are afraid to become a great surgeon?" Cristina wondered, but Meredith didn't notice her much while talking about Christopher."He can roll over now and last night he rolled over and landed on the floor and I was afraid to tell Derek because he'd be mad – I guess. I did a full neuro exam every 20 minutes and stayed awake all night to make sure he's still awake."  
"Your mother wouldn't have done that." Cristina reminded her and added drily "She would have been in surgery and left you with a nurse."  
Meredith looked around "Where is George by the way?"  
"Feeling the adrenalin rush. Ever since he has been assigned to trauma he's clocking crazy hours. Says he needs the money. " Alex laughed "Hard to believe, but I think Bambi is kicking ass in trauma."  
"Yeah, he's Owen's best friend." Cristina exclaimed "Won't be long until they share a bed."  
"Jealous?" Alex teased Cristina who was still thinking about Owen's suggestion to move in together.  
"I don't get jealous."  
"Sorry guys I have to go" Meredith excused herself and pointed at her pager. It was the Chief again.

Derek walked up to Meredith who was sitting in the cafeteria holding on to a cup of coffee "You didn't come home last night."  
Meredith looked guilty. She hadn't planned to spend the night in the hospital and it hadn't been the first time since Dr. Webber had started to tutor her. "I was drinking with the gang and after that I spend the entire night in the research library to find a way to dissect some tumor. Sorry I should have called."  
"The gang?" Derek smirked.  
"Cristina, Alex. We were drinking at Joes, but got paged before we could get drunk and by the time I got out of the hospital it was too late to drive home, so I stayed the night and did some research. Sorry. Forgot to call you." Meredith apologized and smiled at Derek who caressed Meredith's head and put down a brown paper back in front of her.  
"I brought you breakfast. A bagel, some pancakes with syrup and orange juice." He smiled and kissed her. "I don't want you to eat grilled cheese."  
"Best husband ever. Where's Christopher?" Meredith laughed.  
"I left him at home." Derek said and he waited for a reaction. When Meredith looked slightly concerned he started to grin and said "No, he's at daycare. I have an aneurysm clipping at 9.00 and I'm off after that, so Mark and I are going to take the kids hiking."  
"You are going to take the kids hiking?" Meredith asked in disbelief.  
"We are."

* * *

George walked up to Lexie who had avoided talking to him ever since their date. He waited until the elevator doors were closing and trapped her inside. Biting his lips he started to apologize for everything that had happened. "I'm sorry. You were right, it was a date. I'm trying to get over Izzie and Callie and seeing her with someone else and knowing that Izzie has a brain tumour brought up those feelings again. I'm messed up… I'm… "  
"It's fine George. We don't have to talk about this. I was an idiot and …" Lexie said, but George interrupted her.  
"No, it isn't you deserve better. You deserve to have the dinner I promised you we'd have. You are funny and you are amazing. I miss you…"  
"No George, it's too late. It's too late. We can't be friends. Not anymore." Lexie insisted.  
"Lexie, I know it took me a million years, but I only realized it now… I was an idiot" George tried to explain  
"Did Sloan talk to you?" Lexie wondered. She thought that the sudden change of heart had to do with what she had talked to Sloan about.  
"Sloan?" George asked "Oh my god, you talked to Sloan about us? You can't be serious."  
"I was angry and I didn't mention your name. I just thought, maybe he figured out the details on his own." Lexie said.  
"Do you think Dr. Sloan cares about your love life?"  
"We talked about his frog" Lexie said and walked out the elevator as the doors opened. "which wasn't a frog."

* * *

The Chief walked up to Meredith and Jackson who were standing in the hall going over some patient charts. He asked them to follow him and showed them the room of a little girl "Dr. Avery I want you and Dr. Grey to examine this patient for me, look at the charts, familiarize yourself with the material, look at the scans the tumor you will see is very close to the aorta, come up with a plan, present it, if I give my okay, you can dissect it."  
"Seriously? We get to dissect the tumor?" Jackson asked.  
"Our parents are going to love this. Dr. Avery and Dr. Grey just killed a patient in OR 2." Meredith laughed. "Is he insane?"  
"I'm surprised you haven't told anyone that I'm Harper-Avery's grandson." Jackson said.  
"I'm surprised they haven't figured that one out on their own." Meredith giggled. "I told Derek"  
"So where are we going to start?" Jackson said looking at the heaps of files in front of them. Her family had taken her everywhere to find someone who was willing to attempt to remove the tumor and two residents were supposed to do it now. It was a bold move.  
"I don't know. Look at the scans maybe?" Meredith smiled and held up the file that contained the latest CT  
"How old are they?"Jackson wondered while Meredith started the computer to insert the CT and look at the scans.  
"Taken at Seattle Pres. last week."  
They went through every layer of the scan separately. It was a mess and Meredith didn't have a clue on where to start. "Hell this looks tricky." Jackson said.  
Meredith nodded "It really does. I've never seen anything like this. The vascularisation of the tumor is bad."  
"Is he even sure we can operate on this? Like at all. This looks like a hopeless case." Jackson said and looked at the scan.  
"Maybe he wants us to decide that we can't operate. I mean look at the file. Every surgeon in the country refused to. My mom had this journal and she wrote 'It takes a surgeon 5 years to learn how to cut and a lifetime to learn when not to'. Maybe that's the lesson " Meredith said and kept looking at the scan for a little while "But I don't know, it looks like it can be done."  
"I'm almost certain that we need a cardio consult on this because of the way the tumor is wrapped around her vascular tissue. I'll page someone."

Meredith and Jackson walked into the room that Dr. Webber had been waiting in with a cardio surgeon and a few interns. "We looked at everything and we don't think you can operate on it. You'd have to block to separate blood supplies and her tissue would be necrotic before you'd even get to the dissection. There's no way to do it." Jackson said.  
"There's no easy way to do it. You were lazy." Richard critized them "Come on, Grey, Avery, think outside of the box, you have it in you, I know you do. There is a way to help this little girl and you are the ones that figure it out."  
It hurt to admit but Meredith said "We are not real surgeons yet, we don't have half the experience you do."  
"It's not about experience Meredith, your mother was nominated for her first Harper Avery award when she was still a residents." Richard reminded her "The foundation doesn't care about experience and neither do I."  
"There is no way anyone could pull this off, they were send away by Hopkins, Mayo and even my grandfather accessed the case and said you couldn't do it." Jackson insisted  
"I want you to find a way and until you do, you won't see the inside of an OR." Richard said and left the room. Meredith and Jackson looked at the interns in disbelief.  
"We have to come up with something" she said "How do we do that?"

* * *

"Hello, how is everyone doing?" Meredith asked when she came into her living room. The two surgeons were playing on the ground while their two babies were sleeping beside them.  
"The kids are fine. Glad you are home." Derek greeted her.  
"I have to point out that my daughter is way better at rolling over than your son." Mark smirked and Meredith laughed and wondered "Is everything a competition with the two of you? How is Addison doing? Is she still trying to persuade you to move to L.A.?"  
"How do you know about this?" Derek looked at.  
"I work at the hospital. You know that gossip spreads faster than STDs in that place and your dear friend has been bitching and moaning in the OR for quite some time now." Meredith giggled and looked at Mark.  
"I am not. I'm going to kill Karev."  
"So is she?" Meredith asked again.  
Mark's mood got worse. He didn't really want to talk about it. "I guess. She just keeps pushing the issue. We hardly ever talk about anything else."  
"I could tell you that I told you so, but I told you so." Derek laughed.  
"Yang likes L.A." Meredith said.  
"That would be a reason to stay far away from that place" Derek laughed.  
"What's the matter with you and Cristina? She wouldn't tell me and you are being snarky. So I figure something's up." Meredith wondered.  
"She has no appreciation for neurosurgery whatsoever" was all Derek told her.  
"Can you blame her?" Mark laughed  
"So you are staying in Seattle?" Meredith tried to find out.  
"If it's my decision, we'll stay in Seattle. I got used to the rain." Mark laughed and started to collect some of Maria's toys.  
"I will help you move." Derek laughed.  
"Shut up." Mark told him "I'm going to grab my kid now and go and leave you two here to do the things I'd be doing too."  
"No stay, we can have dinner." Meredith said.  
"Do you cook?" Mark wondered and eyed her suspiciously "Your sister told me that you almost poisoned her with eggs.  
"No, Christ, no. I'm not going to cook and Lexie is allergic to eggs. I didn't know." Meredith giggled "Derek is the better cook"

* * *

"Back to square one and we don't get to be in an OR until we figure this one out." Jackson sighed and sat down next to Meredith who kept doodling sketches of a doll.  
"I had this doll, anatomy Jane. As a child, I had this doll." She said and looked at the sketch in front of her. She had just figured out what they could do.  
"We should try to find a way to deal with this tumor" Jackson insisted. "Not discuss our childhood memories, even though I'm sure you weren't playing with that doll when you pushed me down that slide."  
Meredith giggled and looked at him "Anatomy Jane was Seattle me –the bright and shiny version - not messed up and twisted Seattle me. Pushing you down the slide was Boston me. Anyway, I'm trying to find a solution here. She had detachable organs. You could take them out- one by one."  
The cardio surgeon who was sitting beside them shook his head. "You want to butcher her?" he asked and looked at both of them.  
Jackson realized what Meredith was trying to suggest. "She thinks we could take out the organs one by one to get better visualization."  
Meredith nodded and added "and easier access. I actually do."  
"There are two separate blood supplies, we don't have time."  
"What if we make time?" Jackson asked and Meredith and he exchanged a look.  
"How?" the cardio attending wondered.  
"Put them on ice and use artificial grafts to reconstruct the part of the blood supply that is not affected during the surgery. It's done for organ transplants" Jackson told him.  
"It should work just fine with her own organs. I'll get Webber and we are going to present that plan to him." Meredith said with a smile on her face and got up from her seat. She'd finally see the inside of an OR again.  
"You really want to rip her apart?" the cardio attending asked and sighed thinking that it was a crazy plan.  
"And put her back together when we finished the repair." Jackson nodded "We are going to cut out the tumor when every single cancerous cell is gone, we are going to suture her back together."

* * *

"Lexie, you still need a lift to…" Meredith said walking into Lexie's room after checking how Alex was on her way to the hospital. When she looked up and saw her sister naked on the bed she paused and struggled to continue. "-oh, my- oh, my god! What are you doing?! Get out! Uh Wh-why are you naked? Oh. I should go."  
"God. I was waiting for Alex." Lexie yelled attempting to cover up her naked body as fast as possible. She was angry her sister had walked into the room without a proper warning and was holding on tidly to Alex's flannel sheets.  
"Well, Alex left ten minutes ago. And since when are you two still—" Meredith looked at her sister and couldn't believe what she saw. This was so her in her intern year.  
"Since you caught us the first time." Lexie rolled her eyes. This was the second time in two weeks Meredith had walked in on them.  
"Lexie, this is Alex we're talking about. Emotionally, he's like me three years ago." Meredith reminded her sister. Alex had been screwing his fair share of random chicks ever since Izzie had left. "You can't be having feelings for him. You realize that."  
"Yeah, of course not. It's-it's just sex." Lexie tried to say. "There are no feelings involved."  
"Right." Meredith laughed.  
"Because you are a no-feelings type of girl. Your heart lives in your vagina." Meredith laughed and looked at her sister who was still covering up her naked body with the blanket.  
"It does not" Lexie insisted "I swear. It's not this time."  
"Okay."  
"Sure." Lexie protested "My heart does not live in my vagina."

* * *

"Are they actually going to move?" Meredith asked Derek when they sat down next to each other on the couch.  
"If Addison wants to, they will. She's used to getting the things she wants." Derek laughed "We'll just have to wait and see"  
"So how are you feeling about this? I mean he's your best friend." Meredith said. Derek hadn't thought about how it would impact him yet. He had everything he needed.  
"It's fine, I have you and I have Christopher. We have a beautiful house and I love you. Wherever you are I am."  
"I love you." Meredith said with a smile on her face. Ever since Derek had returned from L.A. things had been perfect. She was on a streak. She hadn't lost a single patient since the day Derek had returned from L.A. Her son was happy and was starting to move around the house. "Christopher is trying to start crawling. It's funny to watch. You should have a look at him. He tries to move forward but pushes himself backwards and then he gets angry because he moves further away from the object he wanted to get closer to."  
"You are mean. You take pleasure in your son's misery." Derek teased her. "But I agree, it does look adorable."  
Meredith giggled. "I'm going to operate on an inoperable tumor tomorrow."  
"You are?" Derek said. "I'm so proud of you. Now two people in this house are going to be able to say that they managed to do the impossible."  
"It's tricky, but yeah, Webber is making Jackson and me take the lead. He wants to push us to our breaking point I guess. It's going to be amazing. You should see it. The vascularisation. It's tricky. It only takes one wrong move and she dies" Meredith explained.  
"You are amazing. And our son is amazing but we better get him to bed now." Derek kissed her forehead. He looked at her and said "I have to fly to L.A. again next week. I just wanted to let you know." They both knew what this meant.

* * *

The cardio surgeon looked concerned. He had no understanding as to why Richard Webber would let two residents perform a surgery like this. "Are you sure you want to let them do it, Richard? They are going to kill that girl."  
Dr. Webber didn't like if his decisions were questioned by other surgeons. He had carefully considered if Meredith and Jackson were ready for their first big save and thought they were "They are not. We worked out a plan and they are going to go with it. I'll step in if it's necessary, but they worked hard to figure out a surgical plan and…"  
The cardio interrupted him "You have no clue how tricky it's going to be to coordinate the blood supply for the major organs and …"  
"I beg to differ. My residents are extremely capable" Richard said and walked away from the cardio surgeon.

"Is he talking about us?" Meredith wondered as she prepared herself for surgery.  
Jackson was standing right next to her and laughed. "If you are extremely capable" he repeated what Webber had just called them.  
"Extremely capable of killing the patient if anything goes wrong." Meredith snarked "I mean what we are trying to do, it's crazy. Why did he pick us?"  
"Nepotism." Jackson joked to lighten the mood before a surgery like this.  
"You're probably right. Do you think it's safe to go in?" Meredith asked and they looked through the window to check if Webber and the cardio attending were still fighting.  
Jackson saw that Webber had sat down on a chair in the back of the OR and concluded "Seems like it."

"Alright kids, let me be clear. I'm the lead surgeon on this." The cardio surgeon told them as they all walked up to the table where the little girl was lying.  
Jackson was nervous, but determined to stand his ground. "Dr. Webber said he would and while you boycotted every possible approach we discussed, it were Dr. Grey and me who came up with the plan, so please let us do what we think needs to be done and step in when we tell you to. Are we clear?"  
"Sure…" the cardio attending nodded. He had never been talked to by a resident like this.

 _It was a hot spring day in Seattle. They had been working for 30 hours straight, but trauma patients never ask whether you just started your shift or were about to go home.  
"Come on! Bulky 4-0 silk for ligation" Ellis yelled, but every effort to control the bleeding that way was fruitless.  
"It's not working. We're going to lose her" The Chief of surgery noticed as the heart monitor began to beep more rapidly, almost constantly.  
Ellis looked around the room. " What about a balloon tamponade? "  
"What? –" Chief of surgery looked up.  
"Get away, a balloon tamponade. That could control a penetrating liver injury" Ellis said and pushed him away and tried to save the patient  
"It should. Yes" He nodded and stood a meter away from the table and observed what Ellis was doing. Everyone in the gallery had gotten up from their seats. It wasn't everyday that a resident pushed away the Chief of surgery..  
"Get me a foley catheter." Ellis ordered and Richard used the intercom telling the nurse and Ellis "You might need more - More than one."  
"I know" Ellis dismissed him "Foley now. Let's go"  
As she inserted the catheter the beeping became even more rapidly and the Chief looked very concerned "You think that'll hold the bleed?"  
"It's the best chance we've got." Ellis said and continued her attempt to save the patient. This was the most impressive thing Richard had ever seen "Bulky clamp" The beeping continued, but as she inflated the balloon the BP stabilized.  
"I'll be damned." The chief said "Nice work, "._

"Dr. Webber, we need a third set of hand!" Jackson said when blood was streaming into the surgical field. They had located the source of the bleeding but needed another set of hands to fix the problem, but Dr. Webber didn't react.  
"Dr. Webber!" Meredith said more harshly and he finally looked up from his notebook. "Yeah, sorry, I was thinking about something, sure. Where do you need me?" he asked before stepping up to the table and putting his hands where Jackson and Meredith told him to.

"You did well in there. Both of you." Webber said when Meredith and Jackson started to scrub out. It had been the longest surgery either of them had ever done on their own. They had been in the OR for almost 18 hours . The Chief continued to reminisce about what he had just seen. "I saw your mother and your grandfather working together on a case back when she and I were residents. It was the most impressing thing I ever saw. Today was like travelling back in time. You are going to be two very fine surgeons one day. I'll go now and see how the patient is doing. Well done!"  
After Dr. Webber had left the OR Meredith looked at Jackson and grinned. "You know we could publish this. I mean if I was interested in getting my name out there. But in our case… "  
"… it kind of is out there already." Jackson nodded "The medical journals would be all over this."  
Meredith nodded. They would be. "Grey-Avery or Avery-Grey. My mom would have loved that. It's kind of doing a marketing campaign and use the brand name and marketing budget of another company."  
"Yeah. And that's the reason we should do it. I mean this was spectacular." Jackson nodded. "Just imagine the faces of the publishers when we submit the article."  
"Damn right." Meredith laughed "Anyway, I have to go. My son and my husband are waiting for me."

* * *

 _The thing about the bold moves, they're terrifying. Could end in nothing but tears and broken bones. And that's exactly what makes them so damned exciting._

"You are Hannah's doctor, aren't you? How is she?" Sarah's father approached the cardio surgeon who had worked with them.  
The surgeon nodded and told them "She's in recovery and she's stable. It's going to be a while until she wakes up, but we got the whole tumor and…". He couldn't continue because the father was hugging him so tight that he was barely able to breathe. "You got the whole tumor? You really did? Oh my god, let me hug you."  
After he let go of him the cardio surgeon smiled "If you really want to hug somebody, it's Dr. Grey and Dr. Avery. They worked out the plan and did most of the work. They saved your daughter."


	16. Chapter 15&16

_Sorry girls, this took me quite some time, but I needed to finish those two chapters because I wanted to align the chapter numbers and thought they belong together as the first one is sort of foreshadowing... I was really really busy and hardly spent a minute at home at the weekend so I didn't get to finish the second chapter until today._

 _Lot's happening! Hope you enjoy it._

 _Patsy: Didn't want to post these two chapters apart from each other, that's why the chapter's didn't get aligned last week. Meredith walked in on Lexie and Alex because she was visiting them and checking on Alex and her sister. Derek took Meredith to a nice B &B (as they didn't leave the room, it doesn't really matter where they went :P)  
_ _Susan: Meredith is going to find her on path in surgery. There's going to be some friction with Derek because of it, but she'll exhibit a lot of personal growth throughout it.  
_ _Dora: Nameless cardio surgeon is a nameless cardio surgeon who is working at the hospital.  
_ _Carolyn: Things are about to explode! Hope you 'enjoy'  
_ _Guest: Two chapter update it is.. (I know I'm late, but I was very busy)  
_ _Ellen: Hope you enjoy my next update  
_ _Melanie: Glad you still enjoy reading!  
_ _Liz: Lots of surprises (and some answers) ahead!  
_ _Shelley: Hope you enjoy reading this two chapter update. It's not so much on MerDer, but Meredith and everyone is moving forward._

* * *

 **Chapter 15**

 _Failure is an inevitability. Every scientist was told "No" over and over. The ones we remember, the ones who changed our lives -the Curies, the Salks, the Barnards - they are the ones who wouldn't take "No" for an answer._

Heart alarm. Her pager went off and Cristina ran as fast as she could. She ran into Hannah's room and looked at the two interns and three nurses who had already started CPR. Hannah had been in the hospital for months while waiting for a new heart. "Charge to 250" she shouted and shocked the patient. The heart didn't react, but Cristina was determined to keep fighting while Dr. Altman ran into the room and looked at Cristina and the interns. "Administer one dose of adrenalin" Cristina told the nurse. "Charge to 300" Teddy told the intern and Cristina used the paddles again. There was still no reaction. She had supervised the patient for almost 36 consecutive hours, she had done everything to keep her alive. "Time of death 7.35" Dr. Altman said. "Dr. Yang, there's nothing we can do."  
"She had a heart. She waited for three years and the transport was 40 minutes away." Cristina said and grabbed a scalpel to start an incision to open the thorax. "Her heart arrives in 40 minutes. We only have to keep her alive for 40 minutes"  
"There's nothing we could have done, Dr. Yang. This happens, we can try to prevent it, but it happens despite our best efforts." Teddy Altman's voice echoed in Cristina's ears while she listened to the constant sound of Hannah's heart monitor. She was dead.

* * *

At the same time Meredith hid her face and poped back into the view of Christopher saying 'peekaboo' at the breakfast table. The infant in his booster seat laughed and giggled every time she repeated it. He loved the game. "You love that game, don't you? You can't get enough of it. And you like it a lot better than eating your mash. But usually it's daddy who feeds you in the morning, so maybe you are fuzzy because you don't want me to feed you breakfast because it's daddy's job to feed you breakfast, but daddy is not here, so you are going to starve unless you let me feed you."  
She sighed and tried it again, but was just as insuccessful as the first time. "Don't do this to me. Daddy's away for the week and I have to take care of you by myself. It's not easy for mommy" she said and picked Christopher up from his chair.

After she arrived at the hospital she went up to the peds ward to visit a very special patient. She was about to meet the only person in this world who shared her hate for carousels. The boy sat on his bed and looked up at the television, but turned his head when the door opened. "You are back. I thought you had forgotten about me."  
"How could I possibly do it?" Meredith said with a smile on her face.  
"You don't come around as often as Dr. Karev." The boy said "Do you have my bag of chips?"  
"I sure do." Meredith laughed and threw the bag of chips onto his bed. "I didn't know he was talking to you too. You seem to be a very popular guy. So how's the leg?"  
"It hurts." The boy said.  
"That's good. Means it's healing." Meredith said and browsed through the chart "Your chart looks good. I hope Kepner is checking on you. So any news?"  
"No, it's pretty boring in here." The boy said  
"Told you the TV is no good." Meredith laughed.  
"Were you sick as a child?" The boy wondered. It wasn't the first time Meredith had talked to him since he arrived. "You said you spent a lot of time at the hospital."  
"No, my mom was a doctor, a surgeon, an excellent surgeon and she was a single mom so I was with her a lot." Meredith told the little boy whose parents were working in Tacoma. "I watched her do surgeries."  
"Can I do that?" the boy asked.  
"Watch surgery?" Meredith wondered and the little boy's face lit up "Do you want to?"  
"Sure, anything is better than staying in here all the time." The boy laughed and lookd at her with begging eyes.  
"I see what I can do." Meredith said and got back up.

Meredith and Cristina weren't the only people who were frustrated bout how their day had progressed and the casual meeting at lunch time was a bit of a bitch and moan affair to all of them. Neither one of them had a good day. "I'm not losing patients. I never lose patients." Cristina sighed. "My husband left me for a week because my friend's brain tumor is more important than I do" Meredith joked and looked at Alex.  
"Dr. Robbins is in Africa. She received a scholarship to work at the Ambrose clinic and the new peds attending is an ass. I hate my life. She was the best teacher I ever had and the best teacher I ever had disappears and her girlfriend is living at my house now crying all the time" Alex said while taking a few sips out of his cup.  
"It's so odd, Callie is pregnant and she leaves. It just doesn't make sense." Meredith said.  
"Callie is pregnant?" Alex asked surprised "I thought she was just whining and had a bad break up."  
"Without drinking? You don't embrace a bad break up without booze." Meredith laughed "I still want to know who the father is… I mean there must be a father…"  
Mark leaned over and had obviously eavesdropped on their conversation "I don't know, I haven't been sleeping with her but I agree that it's odd. They haven't been dating for this long and …well, Callie always wanted a child, but Robbins didn't. Now Callie is pregnant and Dr. Robbins leaves. And…"  
"You shouldn't listen in on private conversations, Dr. Sloan." Meredith told him. "But as you love to listen to what I have to say, you might as well listen now. I have this patient up in peds, you know the kid that was in the carousel accident , he wants to see a surgery, so I have to sneak him out of his room and I need help. Are you up for it?"  
"Sure, Luke is a good kid." Alex nodded.  
"So you want me to distract Addison to get passed the babies? I'm very good at that. Anything I do distracts her from everything else lately." Mark said in a rather snarky tone.  
"I'll take care of the nurses and the attending and Kepner." Alex blinked and Meredith knew they were both ready to be her partner in crime.  
"Thanks." She said and got up from her place. Mission Distraction was in operation!

* * *

Dr. Bailey, Jackson, April and Addison were gathered around a tiny new born. The little girl had been found in front of a fire station and had been born at approximately week 30 judging by weight and size. "Oh, my god. I've never seen a heart that small." Addison said when she looked at the monitor.  
"Bowel is necrotic." Bailey sighed.  
"Heart rate is below 40." April alerted the others.  
"Start CPR." Addison told Jackson who put his index and middle finger onto the baby's chest and started pushing.  
They kept trying, but nothing they did had any impact on the baby vitals. They had lost the fight. Bailey bid her lips and told Keppner and Avery to stop "She's been out for 10 minutes, we should stop."  
Addison announced "Time of death 2.34"

* * *

"So, here we are, be quiet and don't look suspicious." Meredith whispered into Luke's ear when she pushed him into the gallery.  
"I'm going to look as unsuspicious as anyone in a wheelchair can." The boy giggled and looked at the monitors in front of him. He was able to see a close up picture of a bone.  
"Fine" Meredith nodded "So this is Dr. Torres down there. She fixed your leg too and right now she's fixating the spine of a 43 year old woman who has been in a car accident."  
"She looks angry." The boys said and looked at Meredith waiting for an answer.  
"Well her girlfriend left her to go to Africa, maybe she is angry." Meredith said and Luke looked at her in surprise "She had a GIRLfriend? Who is the other guy?"  
"He's the neurosurgeon. He makes sure that nothing happens to the nerves and the spinal cord."

* * *

George walked up to Lexie who was sitting at the nurse station going over some of the charts. He stood there for a while opening his mouth, but he didn't say anything. Lexie turned around and looked at him. "What's the matter? You seem to have something on your mind."  
George took a deep breath. He wanted this to be their fresh start, but he knew it wouldn't be easy "I have, but I can't talk about it" George stuttered. The words were hardly coming out of his mouth "What would you say if I told you that I know who the father of Callie's baby was?"  
Lexie looked at his face for a second and knew exactly what this little sign of discomfort meant "What? She's having your baby and you are taking me out on dates?" she asked feeling disgusted and betrayed at the same time.  
"I didn't say Callie was having my baby" George said, but he knew that Lexie had figured out what the look on his face meant.  
"So whose baby is it?" Lexie asked.  
"It's… well…" George stammered. "biologically… it's"  
"yours." Lexie added "Just say it. You and Callie had sex. You and Callie had sex while you were still dating me."  
"It didn't happen like this, Lexie." George said and tried to calm her down while realizing that he had approached the whole story completely wrong.  
"Oh… last time I checked it takes sexual intercourse to conceive" Lexie yelled and most of the nurses around her turned their heads "You had sex with Callie, who is dating someone else too and you take me out on miserable dates? You are an awful person, George."  
"It wasn't like that, Lexie. Let me… explain." George begged, but Lexie had grabbed the charts and walked away.  
"No, there's no point."

* * *

"What are you doing with the patient?" Richard asked firmly when he saw Meredith and Luke in the gallery "I thought you were preparing for your splenectomy with Dr. Bailey."  
"I wanted to bring him for a CT scan but I got lost. I knew there…"Meredith lied, but Dr. Webber knew her well enough to interrupt her "don't lie to me."  
"Fine" Meredith sighed "he's been in here for weeks, Dr. Sloan, Dr. Torres and I operated on him, he's bored, he wanted to see a surgery so I brought him."  
"Your mother would have never done that." Richard said in a way Meredith could not quite process. She didn't know whether this was an insult or a compliment.  
"I know." She finally answered and bit her lip "So do I have to take him back to his room?"  
"No, it's fine, he gets to stay, but if you ever pull crap like this again, I'll have to report it to the board, Meredith. You are not a cruise director, you are a surgeon" Richard said and walked away.

"Who was that?" the boy asked when Meredith sat down next to him again.  
"One of the reasons I don't like carousels." She laughed. They were both silent for a minute and she finally answered the question the boys had directed towards him. "Twenty four years ago my mother and he had a huge fight in the park, I was riding the carousel and they were fighting. Then I got off the carousel and everything changed. Told you it was a silly reason." There was a small pause again and Meredith got up from her seat as she had to prep her patient "Alex is going to pick you up and bring you back to your room once the surgery is over."  
"Is this your story?" the boy asked  
"It's a lame one I know." Meredith said.  
"I think you are lying and there's a lot more to it." The boy insisted, but Meredith exited the room with a smile on her face. "You'll have to find out."

* * *

Meredith sat down on a gurney in the deserted hallway in the basement. Alex was waiting there too. "How's Derek?" Alex asked when Meredith sat down. Meredith knew that Alex interest wasn't primarily focused on Derek.  
"He's in L.A. He seemed optimistic the last time I talked to him" she said.  
"When was that?" Alex asked and looked at Meredith again. He wanted Izzie to live. If she survived it meant that they'd still have a chance.  
"Yesterday evening, Alex. He's in surgery right now. I can't call him." Meredith said "in case this was what you were going to ask"  
"Do you think he'll get all of it?"Alex asked. Truthfully Meredith didn't know. Meredith hadn't seen any of the scans, but she wanted to calm Alex down. "I don't know Alex. He's a good surgeon. I better get back to the OR now or Bailey is going to kill me. Alex, she'll survive this. We are all going to survive this."  
"Who are you? God?" Alex laughed.

* * *

Owen was standing in the OR and shouted"Dr. Grey, stop, he's been out for too long."  
Lexie kept performing CPR. She had been the one who had informed his wife about the progress during the five hour surgery "We can't lose him, his wife and his two kids are in the waiting room." Lexie said while tears ran down her cheek.  
"He's been out for too long. There's no point, the injuries were too extensive." Owen said and took Lexie's hand of the patient saying "Time of death 5.48."

* * *

"Hey Grey, hey Christopher. You are getting so big." Mark smirked when he walked up to Meredith and Christopher who were sitting at a table in daycare while Meredith was feeding Christopher.  
"Am I?" Meredith smirked  
"I was talking to your son." Mark laughed.  
"How are you Dr. Sloan?" Meredith asked nonchalant and winked. "I haven't seen you in days."  
"Well, life as a father and surgeon" He joked and pulled out the bottle with breast milk from his bag. "How did our special mission go?"  
"We got busted." Meredith admitted.  
"Damn!" Mark laughed. "So how are you with Derek in L.A.?"  
"You mean how I cope with my husband being out of state doing brain surgery on a cancerous friend of mine while I'm here with our baby son?" Meredith looked at him "I'm fine. You can tell Derek that I'm fine. How are you and Addison?"  
"I don't understand why she wants to go, everything is perfect here." Mark said and smiled at Maria.  
"Maybe it's because she needs the sun." Meredith said and looked at the rain drops at the window.  
"Would you leave if Derek asked you to?" Mark wondered.  
"I don't know. My whole life is here. For the first time in my life I have a family and friends, it's hard to leave this behind." Meredith said and looked at Mark "But you only worked here for a while, your family is in New York and your reputation would give you a job anywhere in the country."  
"Your name gives you a job anywhere in the country." Mark said and looked at Meredith. They both knew it was true. "It's just like, I don't even like the city, but for the first time in my life I feel like an actual human being…"  
"… and you think it's going to change when you move to L.A. and Addison joins Sam's practice?" Meredith asked. She was an expert on twisted thoughts and not feeling good enough.  
"I don't know." Mark said "And I'm sure Maria would miss Christopher. They are having a lot of play dates lately."  
"They probably spend more time with each other than with us." Meredith nodded.  
"Don't feel guilty, you are a great mom. You are great with kids. You have a job and you take care of your child as much as you can, that's all you can do. Don't let anyone tell you that this isn't enough." Mark said and they both exchanged a look of encouragement.  
"Who's this grown up and what has he done to Dr. Sloan?" Meredith giggled while cleaning up Christopher's mouth with a bip.  
"I can be helpful if I want to and you are my favorite sister in law." Mark said.  
"I'm your only sister in law." Meredith giggled.  
"See." Mark nodded "Favorite sister in law."  
"I liked you a lot better when you were this smug arrogant cocky manwhore." Meredith teased him "I have to get this little guy back to sleep or Bailey is going to kill me for being late to our surgery."  
"I can do it" Mark said and she handed over Christopher to him.

* * *

Lexie ran into Mark who was about to leave the day care. "Dr. Sloan. Have you seen my sister?"  
"She just left to scrub in with Dr. Bailey." Mark said and looked at Meredith younger sister. She looked agitated.  
"Damn." Lexie cursed and looked at Mark"Can I ask you a question?"  
"Depends" Sloan said and watched her babble.  
"If you are having a child with someone, do you think it's immoral to ask someone else out on a date? What does it tell you about a person if she does it?" Lexie asked and Mark had obviously no clue what she was going on about  
"Are you asking me out on a date Grey?" Mark looked surprised and genuinely confused.  
"Oh god, no… no… " Lexie stammered in a way that was typically to both Grey sisters and that had been something that made him attracted to Meredith instantaneously when he arrived."No… you are attractive, but I … hmmm… I was not talking about you… ahmm… I have to go…"  
"What a pity." Mark sighed.

* * *

"Grey, what are you doing there?" Bailey asked when the heart monitor suddenly started to beep more rapidly. The patient's heart went into arrest and there was no reason for it.  
"I didn't do anything." Meredith said and looked for bleeders everywhere, but couldn't find anything.  
"Why is his heart rate up?" Bailey asked.  
"I don't know Dr. Bailey. All I do is hold a clamp and give suction" Meredith said and they both checked the surgical field again. This was a routine procedure and complications like this weren't too common.  
"Is there a bleeder somewhere? Help me look." Bailey told her.  
"He's having a heart attack." Meredith said "Get me a crash cart."  
"Charge to 200." Bailey told one of the surgical nurses while performing CPR. "Clear" Meredith yelled.  
"No reaction." Bailey sat and a nurse added "60 seconds."  
"Push epi." Meredith asked them. "Alright. Charge to 300."  
"Clear." She said and the procedure started again. They tried to resuscitate the patient, but he flatlined. There was nothing they could do.  
"Time of death 6.15" Bailey admitted defeat.

* * *

 _Failure is inevitable, Unavoidable. But failure should never get the last word. You have to hold on to what you want. You have to not take "No" for an answer, and take what's coming to you. Never give in. Never give up. Stand up. Stand up and take it._

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Lexie wondered when Meredith walked up to her and Callie who were sitting on the swing set.  
"My patient died. I need someone to have an adult conversation with" Meredith said and sat down next to Lexie who held on to a bottle of beer while Callie took a bite of her cheeseburger.  
"All our patients died. Horrible day" Callie said while chewing.  
"Want a beer?" Lexie asked looking at Meredith.  
"No, thanks, I'm driving." Meredith said "So what are you talking about?"  
Callie laughed "The joys of sleeping with Karev"  
"You slept with Alex?" Meredith asked surprised.  
"Didn't we all?" Callie laughed at peeked at Lexie  
"No." Meredith stated and looked at Lexie and Callie in disbelief.  
Lexie got a little bit passive aggressive about all of this "Well, we slept with the George too." She bit her tongue "Didn't we? I mean you did. Before and after he slept with me."  
"Are you saying what I think…" Meredith started and looked at her in disbelief, but Callie interjected "George is the dad. Yeah. But I did IVF and he was sperm donor BWY46729, so I didn't know. Well, I didn't know until I ran into him at the fertility clinic. I picked my ex husband's sperms because I thought based on the stuff he wrote on the questionnaire he was a nice guy."  
"You did IVF?" Lexie asked with her mouth opened wide.  
"I wouldn't sleep with him." Callie laughed "Not again, anyway. Looks like I'm not sleeping with anyone soon."  
"Our love life sucks." Lexie said and looked at Callie.  
"Are you playing whose life sucks the most?" Meredith giggled "Because looking at the two of you, I don't think I stand a chance."  
"No, just look at this little bundle of joy." Callie said and extended one of her fingers to Christopher, who held on to it. "At the minute you really don't stand a chance. But we'll get through this. Love sucks. "  
"It gets better" Meredith said. After everything she and Derek had been through they were finally in a very good place. After all it had all been worth it.  
"Shut up. This is sexual frustration land" Lexie said and opened herself another bottle of beer.  
"You could just ask Alex." Meredith teased her sister.  
"Alex is all squishy because Shepherd is poking around in his ex girlfriend's brain again." Callie said "I really like the red in the nursery… only room that doesn't remind me of Arizona because I fantasize I killed her and used her blood to paint the walls… crass.. sorry… inappropriate, totally inappropriate"

"I'm going to leave the two of you here. Don't sleep with inappropriate men here and don't join all our patients."  
"Sure, it's not like we can get put through a windshield or crushed by a plane here. We'll survive. Why don't you stay here. I mean the nursery is empty and it's a long drive to an empty house.". Lexie said. "We can deal with this baby together – well all of those babies."

* * *

 **Chapter 16**

 _When something begins, you generally have no idea how it's going to end. The house you're going to sell becomes your home, the roommates you were forced to take in become your family and the one night stand you were determined to forget becomes the love of your life and sometimes things just go the other way._

Meredith looked at Christopher who was still sitting in his baby bed in the nursery she had painted with Cristina. "Your daddy is coming home today because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are going to eat turkey in the hospital cafeteria and you are going to get your favorite carrot mash. It's going to be great because there are a lot of emergencies on thanksgiving because people who can't cook attempt to and your mommy and your daddy are going to fix them." She told him while he was starring at her with his piercing blue eyes. He looked more like Derek every day.  
"You are weird." Alex said as he peeked through the door.  
Meredith would have been offended if anyone else would have told her this, but she knew that Alex was teasing her "It's what happens when you are alone with an infant for a week. That's why I decided to crash here last night"  
"You slept in the nursery again?" he wondered and shook his head. She had been staying over at the frat house every second night since Derek had left.  
"Yes. It was late and I didn't want to go back to the house. It's lonely without him." Meredith made up as an excuse. On a normal day she would have driven back to the house, but on a normal day her husband would have been there.  
"Do you really want to work on Thanksgiving? Don't you have any family traditions you want to share with Christopher?" Alex wondered and sat down next to her.  
"Christopher is 8 months old, he won't remember and for me eating turkey in the hospital cafeteria is the only thanksgiving tradition I ever knew" she laughed and thought about all the thanksgivings she had spend in an OR gallery observing her mother in surgery. While other people watched football on thanksgiving, she had watched surgeries.  
"It's a surgeon thing." Jackson who had stayed over to study added "We don't really have family traditions."  
"You must have something." Alex insisted. Even though he had lived in a fair share of foster homes he had gotten to know Thanksgiving traditions. "My father used to get drunk and beat the crap out of me"  
"Well, when other people watch football, we are watching football we watch emergency laparotomies or craniotomies or whichever freakish surgery comes our way." Meredith giggled. "And we didn't get taken away by child protection services."  
Lexie was the only one around who had grown up in a normal home. "We used to have dinner at our house, just mom, dad, Molly and me. We'd eat way too much and watch television together. It was sort of perfect. Now I'm just alone"  
"Are you not going to meet Thatcher tomorrow?" Meredith looked at her.  
Lexie who had still not gotten used to the fact that his father was dating a woman who was as old as she rolled her eyes "No, apparently he's going to fly to Oklahoma to visit his girlfriend's family. So I'm going to be at the hospital"  
"How about we all have dinner together?" George suggested.  
"Sounds good." Lexie nodded.  
"I'm thankful for a lifetime of crappy hospital food." Meredith laughed.  
"Cheers to that!" Jackson chuckled "Can I invite April?"  
"Kepner, seriously?" Alex wondered.  
"She's not too bad if you get to know her." Jackson defended his request. April had been one of the few people who never tried to take advantage of the fact that he was an Avery and it was something he appreciated a lot.  
"It's a public place, it's not like we can uninvite her!" Lexie said.  
Meredith rolled her eyes and mumbled "Fine"

* * *

"They are married for how long?" Cristina asked. She couldn't believe that the date in the chart was actually right.  
"50 years. It's incredible. Isn't it? Loving the same person for your entire life" Meredith said.  
"Seriously? Who's married for so long?" Cristina asked. She didn't know anyone.  
"Not a lot of people, but according to the nurses they really love each other. He bought flowers for her everyday since she got admitted" Meredith said. "It's really cute and I'm going to find out what's wrong with her."

"Hello Ms. Hudson, I'm Dr. Grey and I'm here to take you for your biopsy." Meredith said when she walked into the room. The patient in front of her was a 75 yea old lady. She had come into the hospital complaining about abdominal pain, but so far most of the tests had been inconclusive.  
"Please make sure she's going to be okay. I can't imagine what I do if something happens to her." The husband who was sitting beside her said.  
"I'm going to be fine Graham." Lauren said and lifted up his hand to kiss is "This young lady is going to do her job and take me for this biopsy and they are going to find out what kind of thing is in my liver."  
"I'm only concerned." Graham insisted and kissed her hand.  
"It's going to be fine, Graham, we are going to go to Italy next months, I tell you everything is going to be fine." Lauren said and smiled "I'm not going to die today."

"Dr. Grey? Can I talk to you for a moment?" The husband who had followed her outside the room asked Meredith.  
"Yes." She nodded "What's the matter? Do you have a question?"  
The husband seemed nervous and Meredith realized that he probably was when she heard what he had got to say to her "If you find something that you are unable to treat, don't tell her. I don't want her to spend her last days scared out of her mind. I've seen her mother and her sister go through this and I don't want her to suffer through chemo and be miserable. So please don't tell her."  
"I'm going to take her to do the biopsy now. The results should be back this afternoon." Meredith said and walked away.

* * *

"Hey, I'm back." Derek greeted her when she walked out the scrub room door after performing a biopsy on her patient Lauren.  
"My favorite husband. We missed you. How was…" she said and hugged him. Before she kissed him she noticed the glimmer of sadness in his eyes and moved away "No, no, you can't be serious. No."  
"I'm sorry." Derek said quietly.  
"What happened? You said she survived the surgery and was fine when she woke up. That she was in recovery." Meredith bit her lip. She was trying hard to pull herself together after all she was at work and had a delivery for the lab.  
"The surgery went well, but she had signed a DNR and when she coded in her room there's nothing they could do." Derek said. He wanted to hug her, but she kept her distance.  
"So she's dead?" Meredith asked again because she didn't want to believe it.  
"Yes, she's dead." He nodded "She died this morning. I'm sorry."  
"Should we wait until we tell anyone? I mean it's thanksgiving tomorrow. People should be cheerful and happy, shouldn't they?" Meredith asked.  
"Is there ever the right moment to tell news like this?" Derek asked.  
"I guess there isn't." Meredith said "I have to tell Alex. Why didn't she want anyone to know?"  
"Maybe she thought it was easier that way." Derek said "She had stage 4 cancer and a 10% chance of survival. I haven't asked her. I wanna see Chris, is he at daycare?"  
"Yes. Just dropped him off before I went for my first consult." Meredith said. "Give him a hug. He might not remember aunt Izzie, but she has been the one who baked the muffins I used to crave for during pregnancy."

 _"He didn't buy them" Izzie ran through the bathroom in her underwear ranting about the fact that despite being told to George had not bought the tampons.  
Meredith turned to George and asked while Izzie got into the shower "You didn't buy them?"  
"Men don't buy tampons!" he defended himself.  
Izzie opened the shower door "You know what? You're going to have to get over the whole man thing, George! We're women! We have vaginas! Get used to it"  
George sat down on the bathroom floor "I am not your sister!"_

"I was looking for you. I needed to tell you in person. Can you sit down Alex? Derek is back from L.A."  
"It's bad, isn't it. How is she?" Alex wondered.  
"Alex. They did…" Meredith tried to use the line she had used on patient's relatives all the time.  
"Don't Doctor bullshit me." Alex intercepted "Say it. She's dead. Say it."  
"She died." Meredith nodded.  
"When?" Alex asked in a matter of fact tone. The realization hadn't quite hit him yet.  
"This morning. Just before Derek left. Do you want to know the details?" Meredith wondered, but he shrugged "No, dead is dead." before breaking down in front of her. He was laying there like Izzie had been on the bath room floor after she had found out that Denny was dead. Time didn't move for Alex. He felt small and helpless, everything around him was moving, but nothing that happened mattered. The only person he had ever loved was dead. No meaningless sex would be able to fix this.

 _Alex and Izzie were sitting on the swing on the front porch. It was early spring during their second year of residency. They were looking at a number of shooting stars. "Make a wish." Alex said and kissed her neck. "What if I don't have anything to wish for?" Izzie who was cuddled into an oversized blanket "What if I have everything I could ever want?"  
"Then wish that nothing changes." Alex said softly and looked into her hazel brown eyes with a little smile on his face. _

George walked into the locker room where Alex was laying on the ground curled up like an embryo: "Alex! I need you for a consult. What's the matter?" George said before he saw in which state Alex was. He looked at Meredith who closed her eyes for a second. She tried to suppress the tears that were building up underneath her eye lid.  
"Don't George. He needs a moment." She said softly. "It's a very bad day"  
"What are you talking about?" George wondered.  
"Izzie died this morning. I just told him." Meredith said.  
"Izzie is dead?" George asked and started crying. Meredith stood in between the two guys that had meant the world to Izzie. She watched them both cry. "Everyone I love dies." George said and tried to dry his face. It would be a while until his tear ducts would dry up.

 _Izzie stood in front of his door. They had fought the night before and George wasn't sure what he was about to expect, but Izzie just started talking "I am an optimist. I am a fool. I am not sure. Because I'm your best friend, because I love you, if what you want is to be with Callie then I will do everything in my power to support you and help you make your marriage work. But because I'm your best friend, because I love you, I also have to say... that I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you. I can't promise a future, I can't promise perfection, because we're us, I'm me and you're you. no one knows what will happen. But in my heart, I am sure. I'm in love with you George. And I hope you're in love with me too."Izzie said and it seemed like a dream. It was the second her lips touched his that he realized that it wasn't._

"Are you killing puppies or why are Evil Spawn and Bambi crying?" Cristina asked harshly when she walked in on Alex and George crying in the locker room.  
Meredith looked at her and said "Izzie died this morning."  
"Oh." Was all Cristina could say. She had not expected to hear something like this. Neither one of them had. Izzie had fought so much to get where she was, neither one of them had expected that she'd end up dead. People didn't die at 28.  
"I can't believe it. It doesn't get more real even if I say it out loud. I've seen her in this halls so often, I think she's going to walk around the corner in a second. I can't comprehend. I don't want to understand it. She just left, she has cancer and doesn't tell her friends and dies somewhere without anyone by her side." Meredith said while Cristina kept starring out the window.

 _It was the night before Cristina's wedding. The entire bridal party had gathered in the living room of Ellie's house. "You don't need vows on your hand. When you get up there just speak from the heart." Izzie had told her, but she had dismissed her suggestion. "Izzie, the heart is an organ. It pumps, circulates blood and gets clogged from time to time. It does not however speak. it doesn't have tiny little lips on it." But Izzie had been right, if Burke had been the right person for her, she wouldn't have been forced to write them down on her hand, she would have known what to say._

"What's the matter with you people? Did someone die?" Bailey asked unaware when she walked into the resident locker room.  
"Izzie Stevens" Meredith said, swallowed and added "She died."  
Bailey was quiet and looked at Cristina and Meredith in shock. Izzie had been one of her interns. "Well, there are patients in this hospital that need saving, so you two better move your asses and get Karev and O'Malley to do the same! I want to see you in my OR in 20 minutes. The bowel obstruction doesn't take care of itself and I'm sure the patient is going to appreciate if someone actually does her job here."  
"I'll be there Dr. Bailey." Meredith nodded.  
"I take George, you take Karev" Cristina told Meredith knowing that Alex would be the harder job.

"Alex? Are you okay?" Meredith asked when she approached Alex who was sitting in the hallway "Sorry, that was a stupid question. Bailey wants us to get back to our attendings and I think we should."  
When she looked more closely at Alex she noticed that he had been crying. "I want to hate her, but I can't. It's not fair what she did, it's not fair on anyone of us."  
"I know, but you should get back to work. We all have to." Meredith said and offered him a hand to help him get back up. "We can go to Joe's after work and have a drink in her honor or a cupcake or whatever."

* * *

"Your old couple's biopsy." Cristina said as she handed over an envelope from the lab to Meredith. Meredith opened the brown envelope and read through the report. Her face changed from happy to terrified. "It's malignant, isn't it?" Cristina asked.  
Meredith looked up from her chart and nodded "Yes, it's malignant and he doesn't want me to tell her because he doesn't want her to die scared."  
"She's your patient. You have an obligation to your patient, not to her husband" Cristina suggested and Meredith nodded "So I should tell her."

"Lauren. I have the results of your biopsy here." Meredith said when she walked into the patient's room. The woman was alone as her husband had gone to the cafeteria to get a coffee for himself.  
Lauren recognized the look on Meredith's face and told her "Don't tell my husband if it's malignant. Don't tell him. Just take me to surgery tomorrow and try to resect it. Start me on rounds on chemo. I want to fight this because I want every minute with him."  
Meredith looked at her and didn't know what to say. When she realized that she hadn't said anything she started to utter particles of sentences: "I'd have to talk to my attending… see what we can do. The mass we have dissected from your liver is malignant. I'm sorry. If we take you into surgery it's very dangerous…"  
"I know. Don't tell Graham about this. We had a wonderful time together and I want him to remember me like this, not like the miserable version you become when you have end stage liver cancer. I want you to try everything, but when you see that it's not working, just kill me. Kill me on that table." She said  
"We can't do this." Meredith shook her head. "We can't kill you. You can't die without telling the people you love that you love them."

* * *

Cristina, George, Alex and Meredith sat at the bar. Today had been a terrible day. They had started out as a group of five rivals and had soon become friends, family. They had grown up and they had spent countless nights on the floor of the living room studying for exams or at the hospital keeping patients alive over night. Now it was only the four of them and they all sat there and neither one of them said a world. They observed people coming into the bar after a hard day of work, chatting up the girl on the table next to them or leaving to go home. After he had finished his first beer it was George who broke the silence. "Did you ever regret something you did? Because I don't think I do. I regret the things I didn't do. When I transferred, I just stopped talking to her. I missed her and I just quit. I quit being her friend. Even after I came back after the merger. I quit being her friend."  
"Remember the psychic patient who told her the missing ingredient for her cupcakes?" Meredith smiled "that guy was freaky."  
"Or when she operated a bakery out of your kitchen after Denny died?" Cristina added.  
"She was so jealous when Derek stayed over for the first time…" Meredith laughed. It seemed like a lifetime ago.  
"Or when Callie and I got married in Vegas and she didn't believe we actually did it." George smirked.  
"She was good in bed" Alex added and the other three turned their head.  
"Seriously?" Cristina asked  
"It's the truth."  
"Yeah." George nodded.  
"Urgh. You guys are disgusting." Cristina complained.  
Meredith got a round for all of them and raised her glass "To Izzie Stevens, who invited half the hospital to a party at my house!"  
"To Izzie, who thought that if she eats a tub of butter and no one sees her, the calories don't count." George said and raised his as well. Those were the little things they wanted to remember about her.  
"To Izzie, who told me I was a coward because I didn't kiss her on our first date" Alex sighed.  
"To Izzie, who was eight feet tall and had perfect boobs." Cristina added.  
Meredith uttered surprised. "Cristina!"  
"What? It's the truth!" Cristina insisted, but Meredith kept looking at her until she rolled her eyes and added "Ah, fine. To Izzie, who would have been a half decent surgeon!"  
"Seriously?" Alex asked, but they all just sat there in silence. Izzie had left quite some time ago, but now she was gone.

* * *

"I missed you and my friend died and don't move, just stay here, I need to hug someone."  
"I missed you too." Derek kissed her and brushed off one of her tears with his index finger.  
"Promise me that I won't die alone." Meredith told him.  
"You'll die in my arm. I'll be right by your side. I have you and you have me, and we have Christopher and that's all that matters right now. And we have a lot to be thankful for." He hugged her.  
"Why is the universe so screwed up?" Meredith asked.  
"Meredith, the fact that you are happy doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Izzie died." Derek said.  
"You can read my mind?"  
"I know you, Meredith." Derek nodded.  
"I feel guilty." She said.  
"And you don't have to. There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done. Nothing." Derek insisted. He had tried everything, but her tumor kept growing. There was a short pause and Derek decided to talk about something lighter "Mark told me you called him a 'smug arrogant cocky manwhore'."  
"No, I said I liked him better when he was this smug arrogant cocky manwhore." Meredith corrected her husband and giggled.  
"Anyway, if I didn't love you before, I'd definitely do it now." Derek smirked and kissed her again. He had missed looking into her eyes and he had talking to her. As she looked into his eyes she realized that she'd never get to talk to Izzie again.  
"I still remember how she looked like, lying on the bathroom floor after Denny died. It felt like she left with him. It took us a day to get her back up. She hasn't been the same afterwards and now she's gone." She said and tears build up in her eyes. There was no reason to fight them any longer.  
"It's okay, you can cry." Derek assured her.  
"The strange thing is, I don't have to. She's dead and I don't have to cry" she still tried to fight her tears, but the tears rolled down her face.  
"It's okay, it's okay." Said while holding her in his arms.

* * *

"Mark, I think we have to talk." Addison said the second Mark walked into their apartment. She knew they had grown apart ever since Maria had been born. They had sex, but it didn't feel the same. Their skin touched but they didn't feel close to one another, they exchanged words, but they didn't communicate.  
"Addison, what's the matter?" Mark wondered.  
"It's L.A. Don't you see it? This is our second chance- the practice.. it's perfect." She insisted. Moving to LA would change everything for her. She would be around her best friend around again, working in the practice would free her schedule considerably.  
"Addison, I don't understand what you are trying to tell me. I never knew we needed a second chance. I thought this was our second chance." Mark said.  
"What if Maria wasn't in the picture? What if we didn't have a baby?" Addison asked  
"Why? What happened?" Mark wondered.  
"Nothing. Nothing happened, but I'm not happy, Mark." Addison admitted "But L.A. got me thinking. What if Maria wasn't in the picture? Would you still be with me? Would you still want to move down to Seattle and join the practice, be with me? Because I know you'd rather stay here. I'm giving you an out, Mark. I can take care of Maria. When I came to Seattle I was just lonely enough and scared enough and freaked out enough that I said yes. You kept asking me and you painted a pretty picture and I'm just not sure if this was really about me. If it's not about me, if this was never about me, if this was about you being heartbroken or whatever, I'm offering you an out."  
"Addison, what's going on here? I love you." Mark wondered.  
"Do you? Do you really love me?" Addison asked again.  
"Yes Addison. I love you and I love what we built. I love our child and I love every moment we spend with her." Mark tried to reassure her.  
"It just feels like we were both too foolish and caught up in a romance that should have happened 15 years ago. That's when we should have happened." Addison shouted.  
"Addison, what's the matter?" Mark asked calmly.  
"Don't ask me. Because I don't know anything. I don't know anything anymore, except, I can't be in love with a man who's not in love with me. I can't. So if you're serious and you love me then move to L.A. with me. But if you were just in love with the idea of getting another chance with me and with raising a baby, then please, stay in Seattle and we'll figure things out with Maria." Addison said and tears were running down her eyes. She knew he wouldn't go with her. She knew he wanted to pick Seattle over her and it broke her heart.  
"Hmm I'm so sorry. uh-huh I'm sorry, red. I can't decide something like this right now." Mark said and took his jacket before walking out the door. He needed time to think.

* * *

"Izzie is dead" George said. He sat on one of the benches in front of the hospital. People were looking at him, but he felt lonely and sad and the constant cold and rainfall made the whole situation slightly better. He saw Izzie everywhere he went.  
"I'm so sorry George. I'm so sorry" April said. She sat down next to him, took his hands and for a while they just sat next to each other. She had done it before, she had been the one who had put him back together after the divorce "I know she always had a special place in your heart"  
"She did, she really did." George sobbed.  
April tried to comfort him "You'll see her in heaven. She'll wait for you."  
"April, I don't need your religious crap, don't invite me to the prayer circle, don't." George snapped "And the crush you have on Shepherd, it's ridiculous. He has a wife and a child and he doesn't love you. He's a friendly person, but he doesn't love you. And you don't love him! So just shut up!"

* * *

 _We spend our whole lives worrying about the future, planning for the future, trying to predict the future, as if figuring it out will cushion the blow. Trauma hits us unexpected and the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears and wildest hopes. But one thing is certain when it finally reveals itself. The future is never the way we imagined it._


	17. Chapter 17

_Gina: Thank you for the lovely review! I'm glad you are enjoying the story and my version of MerDer. It wasn't a holiday weekend for me though, but I had a substainly lighter workload at work on monday because of the holiday in the US, but I had a good weekend (despite low temperatures and tons of rain)_

 _Darlene: Thanks for the review! I'm glad you are still hooked on to this story!_

 _Carolyn: Who knows? Nobody knows where they mind end up ;)_

 _Shelley: Yeah, I like how Meredith grows as a person. Not so much MerDer interaction in the next chapter, but you'll definitely get one very sweet moment towards the end! I hope you enjoy it!_

 _Chrissy: There are a lot of chapters on their way and I'll keep writing as long as I think there's a story to tell._

 _Melanie: Yeah, I agree. I ignore all the EW news too because I get sort of angry about the whole set up. My dad died of cancer when I was a teen so I sort of know how hard it is on the people who are left behind and in my opinion it's NOT a great story to tell because of the finality of it all and because of the fact that three beautiful children grow up without their dad + I don't agree with the statement that Mer made too many compromises. Especially towards the beginning the story was about her opening up emotionally to the possibility of being with someone, not about getting a fairytale ending which is why I think most of the promo interviews are BS. In my mind they live on and get their happily ever after because having a man by her side doesn't mean a woman is not strong._

 _Jill: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. 'Killing off' Izzie off screen was sort of hard for me, but in my opinion she would have died on the show too if it wasn't for Alex who had ignored her DNR. I'm glad that you enjoyed how I dealt with the aftermath_

 _Ellen: Thanks! I hope you keep enjoy reading!_

 _Susan: Lots of change for Mark and Addison, they are going to be one of the pivotal points of the next few chapters._

 _Patsy: Another shocker ahead this chapter... I try to tone them done a little bit, but this train is going full speed and it doesn't seem to slow down soon. As I told Jill, I think Izzie survived on the show because she had Alex by her side. I'm glad that you liked the way I wrote her wake. She was gone from lives for a while now so thought going to the bar for a drink and sharing their favorite memories would be a good way to deal with the news._

* * *

 **Chapter 17**

 _Can two people really be meant to be? MFEO. Soulmates. It would be nice if it's true. That we all have someone out there waiting for us. Us waiting for them. I'm just not sure I believe it._

Meredith was laying on the top bunk bed in one of the on call rooms the day after Derek got home. She was sleeping when Mark walked into the room. He thought that the room was empty and kicked the trash can through the room, which woke Meredith up. She looked up.  
"What happened between you and Addison?" Meredith asked and looked at Mark's face.  
"What do you mean?" he asked and tried to pretend that everything was fine, but Meredith noticed it wasn't and sat down on the bed next to him.  
"Why are you here in the middle of the night on your night off?" she asked again.  
"She offered me an out." Mark said without too many explanations.  
"…and you don't know if you want to take it." Meredith added, but was surprised about Mark's response.  
"No, I love her. At least I love her enough." He said and looked at Meredith. He knew that the next sentence would be an awful revelation because if he chose the second option he'd leave his daughter. "But I also want to stay in Seattle. I built my life here. Derek's the only family I ever had. I don't want to choose between him and her. I don't want to choose between my brother and being with my daughter and her mother."  
"What's going to happen if you don't follow her? Think about it for a second." Meredith told him.  
"My daughter is going to grow up without me" He said and tears were building up in his eyes "I don't want that. I know that I don't want her to grow up like this. I know what it feels like to grow up feeling abandoned by my parents. I don't want her to know what that feels like."  
"So you choose her." Meredith said.  
"I do" he nodded and looked at her waiting for orders.  
"Go and tell her…" Meredith said and lay down on her bed.  
"What happened to loving myself?" Mark asked.  
"Sometimes you find someone whom you love more than yourself and you are willing to make sacrifices." She said and looked at him. She was barely able to see his facial expression in the dark room, but his voice sounded puzzled when he said "You are talking about Maria."  
"Yes. Seattle is only a two hour flight away, Mark." She reminded him.  
"I'm going to miss you, Grey. You were always my favorite intern." He said and grinned for the first time since he had walked into the room.  
"You wanted to get into my pants" Meredith giggled.  
"You are all wise now." Mark laughed and got up from his bed.  
"Do you think so?" Meredith giggled and looked at him.  
Mark looked at her and she looked away. "You are good for him" he said while she bid her lip.  
"That's what Derek's mom said when she met me for the first time. So what are you going to do?" she asked.  
"I'm going to do what's right for her. I don't want her to know what pain is. I don't want her to feel lonely. Maybe things will fix themselves once we are there." Mark sighed. He didn't want to abandon in his daughter.  
"Maybe they will." Meredith smiled. She loved it if other people were optimistic about their future "I hope they will. You are a good guy, you deserve to be with someone who loves you the way you love her."  
"Derek divorced her, I gave her a child and I still can't compete" Mark sighed.  
"Do you believe in fate?" Meredith asked and added"Maybe you and Addison weren't …"  
"Meant to be?" Mark laughed and they both remained silent until Meredith nodded  
"Yeah. Not in the long run. Maybe you weren't meant to have Maria and that's what was meant to happen. Maybe she's right around the corner…"  
"the person I'm supposed to end up with?" Mark laughed and they looked at each other while the door was opened from the outside.  
Lexie came in and asked "Dr. Sloan, I was looking for you. I need an ENT consult for one of my patients."  
"We'll continue our little chat later, Grey." Mark got up and left with her. Meredith was left on her own.

* * *

After a night of constantly moving between the on call room and the OR Meredith had finally managed to sleep for two consecutive hours when she was woken up by the sound of her mobile. It was Lexie who had the day off. "Meredith, you have to come over, Alex doesn't want to get up"  
"Have you tried water. Worked when I tried to get him up yesterday" Meredith said and got up from the bed.  
"Yes, didn't work. Now I have two depressed and lonesome people here. I can't do this by myself."  
"Fine, I'll be there in 30 minutes." She agreed and got up.

When Meredith left the hospital to drive to her mother's old house she ran into Derek who had just arrived with Christopher "Derek, nice to see you. I'm sorry, I have to go to house. Alex won't get up. I have to kick his ass."  
"I like how you keep everyone in line." Derek grinned.  
"Shut up." Meredith giggled, but she got more serious as she said "I think he needs someone and I don't leave my friends behind if they need me."  
"See you later. I love you." Derek said and kissed her good bye before she went through the front entrance.

"Alex, you have to get up." Meredith said when she saw that Alex was still laying on his bed when she arrived at the house. They were 10 minutes late for rounds already and Meredith wanted to kick his ass.  
"Go away, Mer." Alex said and tried to push Meredith away.  
"You have to get up or you are going to get fired" Meredith insisted and jumped onto the bed starting to jump.  
"I'm sick." Alex said and tried to kick her off the bed.  
"You are not sick and now get up." She said kicking back.  
"No, I don't I won't ever get up again." He said. "Where's the point?"  
Meredith stopped jumping and sat down next to him. "Alex. She's dead" She said and paused for a second "but there's nothing you could have done and she'd want you to move on with her life"  
"How do you know what she wanted? How does everyone know what she wanted?" He asked in an angry tone "She went to L.A. and burned all bridges with everyone here. And I'm stupid enough to still be in love with her despite everything she did."  
"Alex." Meredith insisted, but he brushed her off "No, go away."  
"Alex, it's thanksgiving, the ER is going to be swarmed with all kind of surgical emergencies, so get your shit together now. When Izzie was lying on that hospital bed after Denny died, you were the one that picked her up and carried her home, you have to pick up yourself now because you are way too heavy for me and I'm tiny. So, get off your ass!" Meredith said and looked at him, but he didn't move. "Mer, You'll never understand what I'm feeling until it happens to you. So cut me some slack"

* * *

Meredith was standing next to Bailey while they were both looking at Miss Hudson's scans. "This is an extremely risky procedure, I don't even know why she agreed to this." Bailey said looking at the arteries that were wrapped around the tumor.  
"I told her about the risks, she was aware." Meredith said remembering the conversation she had had with the patient and her husband and what her patient had to told her after he had left"She even asked me to kill her if we can't divulge the tumor."  
"She did what? Are you out of your mind?" Bailey looked at her in shock.  
"Relax, I told her we couldn't do that." Meredith was amused to have shocked Bailey like that. Not long ago she had doubted that anything could shock her "I told her we'd do everything in our power to save her, but that we wouldn't let her die on our table and she gave me a letter I'm supposed to give to her husband when she dies."  
"May god have mercy on your soul, Dr. Grey." Bailey stuttered and dissected the tumor at the plane "This looks good."  
"Oh my god, you got it out." Meredith starred at the screen.  
"Damn right I did." Bailey nodded with self content. "And don't ever let a patient tell you that she's going to die when the surgery doesn't provide the desired outcome. Get her to recovery, talk to the husband and rip up that letter when you get the chance to."

* * *

"Sorry, I had to see a patient." Meredith apologized for being late. Everyone except her and Dr. Bailey had already gathered around the tables they had set aside for their Thanksgiving dinner in the cafeteria.  
"Shepherd and Mc Baby are here, we figured." Cristina rolled her eyes and offered Meredith the chair next to hers. She said down and looked around.  
"Life of a surgeon." Jackson laughed and tried to put a few peas onto his fork. "You never get a quiet Thanksgiving dinner"  
"I just wanted to tell you that I'm very sorry about your friend." April said, but neither Cristina nor Meredith or George were too happy that she brought up the death of their dear friend. They had been through a lot together and had stood by each other's side every step of the way. They had survived secret husbands, l-vad wires, pregnancies and they had grown closer to each other. Nobody was able to understand how they felt.  
"Shut up, Kepner, no dead Izzie talk at the table." Cristina said harshly and gave her a death-like stare. All the chater around the table stopped immediately and everyone looked at Cristina who continued to eat her dinner.  
"So how does this work? We just take a chair and add a table." Mark who had approached the table asked when he couldn't find any free seats.  
"You are so smart, Mark. One might think that you actually completed your degree." Derek teased him while Richard looked at Maria. "She is adorable, she looks so much like Dr. Montgomery."  
Addison smiled at Richard and nodded before she took a bite of the food in front of her "Christ this is the worst turkey I ever ate."  
"You don't eat here often, do you?" George laughed and shook his head. It truly was the worst turkey he had ever had.

Their dinner would have been peaceful, but the sound of three pagers interrupted the dinner talk.  
"It's my pager. I was paged." Addison said and got up from the table. "I better get going2  
"Same here. Let's go." Owen added.  
April took one last bite of turkey and got up from her seat saying "Sorry, I was paged too, I have to go."  
"We don't care, KEPNER." Cristina shouted so April could hear it.  
"What is all this hostility about?" George wondered and Cristina looked at Meredith.  
"We never asked you to come here. And we never wanted to be here." Alex said  
"Shut up, it's thanksgiving and I want to peacefully eat my piece of turkey with my family." Meredith warned them.  
"We should all be grateful that we get to help people today, isn't that right Dr. Shepherd?" Cristina said trying to imitate April's voice.  
"Yeah, isn't that right Dr. Shepherd?" Jackson laughed. He knew it was wrong to make fun of his friend, but this side of April was something he couldn't help himself but mock.  
"It actually is. It's my sister Nancy's turn to host the family dinner this year and I'm not too sure that I want to be there considering she almost killed us with food poisoning the last time we've been there." Derek laughed.

* * *

"What do we got?" Owen asked when the ambulance unloaded a female patient  
"Sloan Riley, 18, approx. 21 weeks pregnant, fell down the stairs of an escalator at the station. There's free fluid in the abdominal cavity. Fully responsive." The paramedic summarized the patient's condition.  
Owen turned around and looked at Sloan again asking "Do you want us to contact your parents or the baby's father?"  
"Alright. I'm here." April shouted and tried to stop while almost crashing into Owen. She fell and noticed a wound on her hand that would need stitches.  
"Neither, I want to get out of here." Sloan said, but Addison tried to calm her down. She knew the girl would need an exam. "You might need surgery, we have to check you out before you can go home and make sure everything is okay with the baby and you. Are you sure that you don't want us to contact anyone?"  
"My father doesn't know about me, my mom kicked me out when she found out I was pregnant and the baby's father doesn't want a baby. So yes, I'm sure I don't want you to contact anybody." Sloan spat at her.  
While they wheeled her into the OR Addison got the necessary equipment out of the cart and checked Sloan's belly carefully. "Alright, everything appears to be normal with the baby's heartbeat, I will stay to observe the fetal monitor while you fix the bleedings."  
"Sloan, we have to put you under a general anesthesia now to start." Owen said "Everything is going to be fine"

* * *

"Why are you not talking to me?" George asked while stitching up April's wound.  
"Not after what you told me. Just because you were sad doesn't mean it's an excuse to treat me like this. Izzie died, I get it. But just because you feel pain doesn't mean you can inflict it on others, but…" April said while feeling the pain of a needle poking through her skin.  
"I'm sorry." George apologized  
"I wasn't finished George. You were right. I have a crush, a huge crush on Dr. Shepherd and I don't know how to make it stop. I tried, but it doesn't go away and I don't know what to do." April admitted and looked at him.  
"Fall in love with someone else." George suggested with a little smirked. It had worked for him after divorcing Callie. He had forgotten about Callie because he had been head over hells in love with Izzie.  
"I'm a resident. I never dated before. I don't have time to start now" April said in a way that revealed her whole insecurity to George. She gulped and wondered "What did you want to talk to me about?"  
"Callie is pregnant." George said.  
"I know and I think pretty much everyone at the hospital knows." April said with a little smile on her face. She wasn't living on a different planet she thought.  
"I'm the dad. Biologically I'm the dad." George added and looked at her waiting for a reaction-  
"You are the dad? How did that happen?" April asked. She was surprised, but calm totally unlike Lexie who had freaked out upon the reveal.  
"She did IVF and I donated the sperm. Anonymously donated the sperm. She dropped the donor's questionnaire by accident. It was mine." He explained unsure of how April would react.  
"Are you sure she picked your sperm?" she asked.  
"Yes, she told me." George nodded.  
"Does she know?" April whispered.  
"Yes, we talked about it. I'm the sperm donor. Nothing more. She's the parent. " George explained. He had provided everything he needed to.  
"Given the fact that you are her ex-husband…" April tried to gainsay George.  
"I'm the sperm donor and I'm perfectly fine. She made it very clear to me that I have no legal rights and what's worse is that I might have lost the last chance I had with Lexie because of it." George sighed. He was glad that he was able to talk to April about this because Meredith, Cristina or Alex wouldn't have understood.  
"You messed up. Love sucks, but maybe we just haven't met the person we are supposed to end up with yet. There's this patient – Meredith's patient- she and her husband are married for over 50 years. They are blessed. So blessed. That's what it's supposed to look like, that's how it's meant to be."  
"Easy and magical" George sighed and thought of Izzie for a second and added "that's what it was like with Izzie"  
"We'll just have to wait…" April smiled.  
George disagreed. "No, I don't believe in fate. I believe our action determine the outcome we get and I've been acting pretty stupid lately. Lexie is amazing." George said while finishing up the stitches on April.  
"But she'll never love you, George" April insisted knowing that she was right." and you are not over Izzie's death yet."  
"And I have to hurry. Extra shift in the ER." George said and threw away the gloves he had used while doing the stitches.  
"Again, seriously?" April wondered. He had worked in the ER as much as possible lately and she knew it was because he was paying for his mother's health insurance.  
"You know I need the money, April" George reminded her "and the distraction."

* * *

"Mr. Hudson, I'm here to tell you that your wife is in recovery now." Meredith said with a little smile on her face. The whole anxiety that had built up inside of Graham during surgery fell off "You told her. Why did you tell her?"  
"As her doctor I'm under the obligation to tell her the truth" Meredith explained "We were able to get the tumor out, but she'll have to talk to an oncologist about further treatment."  
"Can I see her?" Graham asked.  
"Sure" Meredith nodded and lead the husband to his wife.

Meanwhile Sloan Riley woke up in the room next door. Addison had been sitting beside the girl's bed to check on the baby's vitals when she opened her eyes and looked at Addison in confusion. Addison smiled and tried to calm her down "Sloan, we are going to bring you up to your room now, you'll have to stay here a few days for observation and I discovered a problem with your baby we need to discuss. Are you sure you don't want to contact someone for you?"  
"Can you contact Dr. Sloan?" the young girl asked "He's working at this hospital, isn't he?"  
"You don't need a plastic surgeon, your scarring should be minimal" Addison said with a smile on her face "Dr. Hunt did a fine job on the sutures."  
"You don't understand. I don't want to contact him because of his expertise" Sloan insisted "He's my dad. I came to Seattle to find him."  
Addison was taken by surprise. Her dad. Mark was her dad. Trying to process the implications of the revelation she stood up and stuttered "I a.. I…. I'm going to get him for you." Mark Sloan would be a grandfather soon.

"I made it, Graham. I made it" Lauren said with a huge smile on her face. Despite his old age her husband hurried to get to her and kiss her. After a kiss on the lips he looked at her and smiled. "That's wonderful."  
"I wanted to tell you that I love you again." Lauren said, but she never got to finish her last sentence "I didn't get the opportunity before I went into surge…." Because she flatlined. Meredith and Jackson who were standing by the door hurried to get inside.  
"She's coding. Code blue." Jackson yelled while the nurses brought in the crash cart.  
"I don't understand it. She was fine when we got her out of surgery." Meredith said and starred at Graham "You have to get away, Sir."  
"Clear." Jackson yelled after the paddles had been charged to 200.  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hudson, you have to stay out of the room for now." Meredith insisted and tried to push the husband out of the room. There was no way he should see this.  
They tried everything, but it seemed like Lauren's last words would be 'I wanted to tell you that I love you'. Jackson said "Time of death 15.34." and put away the paddles.

* * *

Derek walked along the hallway looking at Addison. After 11 years of marriage he knew if she wasn't okay and by looking at her he knew something was up "You paged, what's the problem?"  
"See the patient in room 1456?" she asked and he nodded while she continued to explain why she was so confused "Sloan Riley, Mark's kid… why don't you look surprised?"  
Derek looked at her and asked "Are you?"  
If she was honest to herself she shouldn't be. She had witnessed most of Mark's pathetic attempts to get laid for more than 15 years. "We both knew he slept around a lot. I'd be surprised if this is the only Sloane Riley, Sloane Edwards or Sloane Sloan that is walking around." Derek smirked.  
"How do I tell him?" Addison asked hoping that Derek would volunteer to break the news to his friend.  
"You page him, you open your mouth, you articulate words" Derek said earnestly.  
"You are no help." Addison dismissed what he said knowing he was right.  
"I remember you said I was never particularly helpful." He smirked "just do it."  
Neither of them had nothing that Mark had been walking towards them. When he arrived by their side he wondered "What are you talking about?"  
"Nothing" Addison and Derek said at once which made the entire situation even more suspicious.  
"You are hiding something? A secret birthday party? Special black Friday plans I'm not supposed to find out about?" Mark asked excited and added "A secret kid I never…"  
Both their faces changed from amusement to being caught red handed.  
"You are kidding me?" he asked, but Addison shook her head.  
"Sloane Riley, 18, room 1456, she says you are her father, have fun. Congratulations, you are going to be a granddad." Addison said and handed over the chart to her.

"You should get a paternity test. I mean, she shows up here, out of the blue, on thanksgiving" Addison said to Mark who had sat down on a chair in the attending's lounge.  
"It won't be necessary." Mark said.  
"Why?"  
"Samantha, Samantha Riley, her mom told me, she told me she was pregnant, I gave her a few hundred bucks, I thought she would …, but apparently she had the baby." Mark said and looked at Addison. All those year he had never wasted a second thought on the situation.  
"You knew. Maria has a half sister." Addison said and left the room. They both had to process what had happened.

* * *

"Mister Hudson, I'm very sorry. Your wife gave me this." Meredith said and pulled an envelope out of her labcoat "She asked me to read it to you."  
"Can I sit down first?" he asked.  
"You can go in and see her first, if you want to. Before they pick her up." Meredith said while she watched him walking into the room.  
"Can you come in and read it to me there?" he asked and looked at her with tears in his eyes.  
"Sure. Sit down." Meredith said trying to console him.

 _"Dear Graham,  
I write this letter because I know I'm going to die. I never thought I'd be the first to leave and I always hoped it'd be you because I never wanted you to suffer through the pain of walking on this earth on your own. I loved you dearly and if I had the choice to go back 50 years, I'd pick you again and do everything the same. _

_I knew about the cancer and I knew you didn't want me to know. But I asked the doctors to give me the best shot at survival and to try to dissect the tumor. I didn't want you to go through the pain of seeing me die slowly and painfully._

 _When you hear this, I'm not going to be here with you anymore, but I want you to know this. I want you to be happy and I want you to move on. Go on this trip to Italy we always talked about, go there and think about the good times we had and try to make memories of good times without me now. We had a lifetime together, but I want you to move past this. To move on, to fall in love again, to die in the arms of someone you love._

 _I love you,  
Lauren"_

"Do you think I should go alone?" Graham asked her with tears in his eyes. A few days ago everything had been fine and now he was a widower.  
"If you want to honor her last wish, you can go, but you are never going to be alone." Meredith said and touched the patient's shoulder to show support "She's always going to be there. Right by your side and in your heart. You'll never be alone. She'll never go away. What you had. It's always going to be there."

* * *

"Why are you smiling like a love gooey teenager, it's freaking me out?"Meredith laughed when she looked at Derek who was peeking through the blinds of one of the rooms in the surgical wing.  
"There's a pregnant woman here and she's Maria's half sister." Derek explained.  
"How did Addison react?" Meredith wondered.  
Derek laughed and concluded"Surprisingly well"  
"Given the fact that she offered him an out 48hours ago…" Meredith added.  
"She did what?" Derek asked surprise. Meredith was surprised to find out that Mark hadn't talked to Derek about it, but she figured he just didn't get around to it. "You didn't know? I thought he talked to you about it."  
"He can't talk about Addison with me. I'm not impartial" Derek reminded her, but Meredith was amused by the word impartial. "I'm so much less impartial. You want to know how he decided?"  
"He'll go with her" Derek said.  
"He told you?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, but I know Mark. But I guess all bets are off now anyway"  
"What's up with this place? All those half sisters nobody knew about turning up?" Meredith laughed referring to Molly, Lexie and the kid Ellis had given up for adoption. "So Sloan has a kid that is old enough to be a mom?"  
"She's old enough to get pregnant and run away from home without finishing high school, yes. I doubt she's old enough to be a mom." Derek said.  
"How did he take it?" Meredith asked thinking that the past 24 hours must have been an emotional rollercoaster for Mark.  
"Surprisingly well. He's going to be a grandpa. Nancy is going to have a ball when she finds out." Derek laughed.  
"My patient died today." Meredith looked at him  
The smile vanished from his face and Derek said a heartfelt "I'm sorry"  
"That's not my point. She got out of surgery fine and the last thing she told her husband of 50 years was that she loved him. I want this to be us." Meredith said and looked at him. Her eyes and his eyes locked while Meredith continued "They loved each other like they just fell in love yesterday. I want that to be us. They were meant to be."  
"It will be us."

* * *

 _Maybe I do believe it, all this "meant to be" stuff. Why not believe it, really? Who doesn't want more romance in their life? Maybe it's just up to us to make it happen - to show up and be meant for each other. At least that way you'll find out for sure - If you're meant to be or not._


	18. Chapter 18

_Soccer season is back in full swing here, so I'm busy at the weekends. We went to the match on sunday and to a theme park in saturday so I was fairly busy, I don't know how to make time for anything these days ^^. This chapter is a bit of a transitioning chapter as it covers a rather long period of time (picking up shortly after thanksgiving and ending around Christmas Eve), so I hope you enjoy reading whatever chapter 18 has in store for you._

 _Kiley: Thank you! I really appreciate all your praise! I hope you enjoy this new update!_

 _Dora: Thank you! I hope you keep enjoy reading this story!_

 _Carolyn: Thank you! I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks for taking the time to read my story while you seem to be very very busy._

 _Ellen: Thank you! There's going to be some romance too, but the next few chapters (after this one) are going to be a little more cloudy for MerDer and there's some drama for every character. I hope you enjoy the story._

 _Melanie: Thank you! I'm trying to shed some light onto how Addison feels about Sloan in this chapter._

 _Gina: Thanks for taking the time to comment! I hope you enjoy this chapter too!_

 _Darlene: Thank you! I hope you enjoy this chapter._

 _Susan: Yeah! They were meant to be!_

 _Chrissy: Maybe you can find the answer here. Sloan is certainly the reason they are still in Seattle. Otherwise Addison would have pushed a lot more than she is doing now! Hope you enjoy MerDer's little moments with Christopher this chapter!_

 _bhavyam1998 : Thank you for the feedback! Hope you enjoy this chapter!_

 _Patsy: I hope you like this chapter! Lots happening!_

* * *

 **Chapter 18**

 _Every day, a surgeon makes decisions that can go one of two ways, Either very good or very, very, very bad. The problem is, the epically great decisions and the epically bad ones look exactly the same when you're making them._

"That's just a cluster of blood vessels." Addison showed Sloan what was going on inside of her on the ultrasound.  
The young girl looked scared and didn't really know what she was seeing. It all looked the same to her and there was no way to recognize anything on the screen "That aren't supposed to be there, and if you pop them, I'm going to die?"  
"W—" Addison said, but paused for a second and started again "No, um, Sloan, it's just a tangled cluster of blood vessels under the baby. I'm not going to go anywhere near them, so I won't be popping them. I'm going to go in, uh, laparoscopically and very carefully cut one of the amniotic bands from around the baby's legs."  
"And then he'll be okay? He'll be able to walk? Then he'll be perfect." The girl asked and her face lid up a little while she looked at Mark with a little smile.  
"Yes." Addison noded and cleaned up the girl's belly. They had caught the defect just in time to fix it.

* * *

Meanwhile Callie had a hard time trying to get Alex to go to work "Come on Karev, get up, don't throw yourself a pity party!"  
"Aren't you the expert on that?" Alex brushed off her attempt to get him up. Izzie was dead and it was the finality of it that made him want to stay in bed all day. It was too late to try to mend thing between them, to late to fix things. It was too late and no matter what he did, she'd be gone.  
"I'm up, Karev! It took me some time, but I go to work and I know that I'll get by on my own. So move your ass!" Callie said and hit him a little, trying to make him move off the bed.  
"I never thought we'd end up like this" Alex said and looked up to the ceiling. During the beginning of the intern year nobody liked him and he was fine with that. If he had never gotten involved with them, he wouldn't feel the pain right now.  
"Neither did I, but Arizona is in Africa now and there's nothing I can do about it and Izzie, is not going to resurrect from the dead. Whether you stay in bed all day or get your ass up, she's dead." Callie said and looked at him with a sad smile. "Live goes on"  
"I don't know how to keep going like nothing happened. If I just go to work, it'd be like she never existed." Alex admitted and sat up next to Callie.  
"Izzie wanted to save lives, Alex. She might have been an adulterous bitch and have slept with my husband, but she wanted to become a surgeon. If you don't go to work you don't save people. She would have wanted you to save people." Callie said and got up.  
"How do you live after something horrible happened to you?" Alex wondered when Callie had already reached the door.  
She turned around again. "You just do. You get up and hope that tomorrow gets better."  
"I miss Arizona. The new peds attending is a dud." Alex said and sighed.  
"She left me." Callie said as she didn't want to engage in a conversation about Arizona.  
"At least there's a chance she's coming back." Alex said. "Can you give me a ride to the hospital?"  
"She can stay where she is for all I care. I moved on, she didn't pick me and I moved on. " Callie told him and he laughed.  
"You ate six cheeseburger last night and shouted that Arizona should beep herself. "  
"In my defense I'm pregnant, hormones are rushing through my body, you are just whining here." Callie laughed "Let's get going"  
"Fine, let's try to live another day!" Alex sighed and got up.

* * *

"They finally hired a new cardio attending, Merry Christmas to me!" Cristina said as she walked into the locker room looking at George, Meredith and Lexie.  
"And are you going to send her off like you did to the last three?" George asked amused. Ever since Burke had left the cardio attendings had come and had left faster than a few patients and rumor were spreading around the hospital that Cristina had played a big part in their departure.  
"Shut up." Cristina told George. "She's kind of kickass. Hasn't published a single article, but her technique is one of a kind. Her ideas are…"  
"Relax Cristina" Meredith giggled "Breathe. You like her? Where has she worked at before?"  
"Yeah. She's one of Owen's army buddies." Cristina answered "So I guess I better go and thank him."  
"Well, I better go and get back to the ER" Lexie said and got up.  
"And I have to go and scrub in with Dr. Montgomery to save Mark's grandchild." Meredith said.

* * *

"Are you sure it's a good idea to let Mark be in here?" Meredit asked and looked at Addison while they were both washing their hands.  
"I'm not." Addison admitted and looked back at Meredith.  
Meredith looked at her and wondered about her motive wondering "But he's the father of your child and your boyfriend so you are going to let him be in there anyway?"  
"Yes." She nodded and told Meredith to do her a little favor. "Before you keep interrogating me Grey, can you do me a favor?"  
"Sure." Meredith agreed.  
"Kick Mark out if he is out of line." Addison said with a little smile on her face and added "and don't tell me what to do ever again. I know what I'm doing" in a harsher tone.  
"Are you sure I should be in there? Addison, I can't be in there. Every patient I scrubbed in on since Izzie died is dead now. I don't want Sloan to die. Let Cristina do the kicking out bit… she's good at that" Meredith tried to talk herself out of the surgery. It was true. Ever since Izzie's death she had been n a death streak. She had never seen so many people die in front of her like in the past few weeks. At this stage she was devastated and afraid to step up to the table. Sloan was too important to Mark.  
"Grey, she's going to be fine. I know what I'm doing" Addison insisted "Let's get going"

The atmosphere in the OR was tense. Prenatal surgery was never easy and it certainly got a lot more tricky if the patient in front of Addison was her boyfriend's daughter. She had to be perfect. She looked at Merdith who was observing the screen while Addison moved the laparoscopic instruments inside Sloan's womb. "Alright, cut the first band, now let's move on to the second."  
"Like that?" Meredith asked and they both looked at the screen again.  
"Why can't I grab his leg?" Addison asked herself and looked at Meredith who looked equally concerned.  
"A problem?" Mark who had stayed in the background up until this point wondered.  
"No, it's just that one of the bands is holding his leg in place. It's a little difficult to get around" Addison explained and asked Meredith for an adjustment of the angle they were looking at the situation from. "Can you put the ultrasound up here? Oh come on"  
"What's the matter?" Mark asked again as he noticed that Addison got more nervous as she looked at the screen and moved the instruments a little more quickly.  
"Her uterine arteries are engauged, but the only way in is inbetween them" Addison explained and handed over some of the instruments to Meredith who was supposed to hold them in place "Can you hold this?"  
"Do you have enough room? These arteries are huge." Meredith asked. It was a critical moment and she didn't want to call time of death again. It had happened too often since Izzie died.  
"I just have to be very very careful. Scalpel please" Addison said as she tried to extend the incision a little.  
"What happens if you knick them?" Mark wondered.  
"Dr. Grey! Tell him!" Addison looked at the resident and Meredith looked back at her.  
"She could bleed out. They'd both bleed out. They could die." Meredith said almost mechanically. She didn't like the odds. One wrong move and Sloan or the baby or both would be gone.  
"I don't like it. It's too dangerous" Mark said  
"Mark, I have assessed the risk factors. I'm 95% confident I can get around the arteries and I'm choosing to continue my surgery." Addison insisted and looked at Meredith while Mark told her "Well, I don't like the other 5% and Grey said she could die. You hit any one of those and she bleeds out right on this table."  
"You are nervous." Meredith tried to calm him down.  
"I'm a surgeon and I'm looking at a time bomb in a uterus. Shut it down. Now Addison." Mark yelled and the entire surgical team and everyone in the gallery looked at him.  
"Dr. Grey, can you please show Dr. Sloan out of the OR." Addison asked, but Meredith had frozen at the thought of having another patient die in front of her. Addison repeated herself "Dr. Grey"  
"I… I… I can't" Meredith stuttered.  
"Meredith, you are not cursed, she won't die. If you ever want to be in on another one of my surgeries, you show him the door now." Addison stated.

Meredith took a deep breath as Addison continued to operate on Sloan and tried to calm Mark down and guide him to the hall "Dr. Sloan, Mark, whatever, I'm sure you care for your daughter and I'm sure you want her to be fine. But in order for her to be fine, you have to calm down now and leave this OR. Do you understand? Dr. Montgomery cannot work her unless you leave."  
"I won't leave, you are a resident, you have no authority to tell me anything." Mark said. "She's my daughter"  
Addison rolled her eyes and told him "Mark, right now Dr. Grey is your daughter's doctor and she's telling you to leave this place."  
Mark slowly made his way to the door and Meredith looked up to the gallery "Cristina, take over for me. I'm going to stay with me"

"Do you think you can continue?" Cristina looked at Addison.  
"It's tricky, but it's nothing I haven't done before. Do you see that artery?" Addison asked and showed her one of the arteries on the ultrasound.  
"Yes." Cristina nodded  
"Well, most surgeons would have jumped ship at this sight, but I'm not most surgeons." Addison said.

"So what are the chances that a Little Shepherd turns up here?" Meredith asked Mark and Derek who were sitting next to each other.  
"Very little Meredith. I was in the marching band in high school." Derek laughed.  
"Yeah, but you played hockey too." Mark reminded him "The ladies liked hockey players"  
"And I didn't know how to use hair products. Believe me, I'd know." Derek smiled "Can I take you home now? We still have to wrap Christopher's presents."  
"Yeah, we better get out of this place before we get paged back to the OR." Meredith giggled and looked at Mark "Are you alright?"  
"Yeah, I'll just wait until everything is over" Mark nodded.

* * *

"Hey, Sloan." Addison said when Sloan woke up from the anesthesia. The young girl was disorientated and didn't know where she was. "It's Addison."  
"Where am I?" Sloan asked and looked around the room.  
"You're in the hospital in Seattle." Addison said and tried to reassure her. "You just had surgery, but everything is fine. You and the baby are fine."  
"Where's my mom?" Sloan cried "I want my mom."  
"Well, Mark's here. Your dad's here. And he's going to be here in just a few minutes." Addison tried to calm her down, but Sloan kept crying.  
"I don't want him. I want my mommy." She cried. Mark was a stranger to her and nothing would change this "I don't want any of this. I don't want a baby. I just want to go home. I want my life back. I want to go home."

"Mark has a kid and he invited her to stay with us once she's out of the hospital. A week ago I was planning to move to L.A. and now I see my boyfriend dealing with his pregnant daughter – a daughter I didn't know he had until after I operated on her." Addison told Richard.  
"I have a daughter Addison." The Chief replied. They both had to face the fact that there were daughters in there lives they had never known about.  
"But Adele…" Addison began to wonder, but Richard interrupted her. "It's Ellis' child."  
"You and Ellis had a child?" she asked again. It was hard to believe. She knew Richard for a long time and his marriage to Adele had always seemed healthy and happy.  
"I only found out last year. Meredith told me. She found out Ellis had a baby after she left Seattle. I never knew about her and if I had the chance to go back on time to meet her I would. If you don't give him a chance to get to know her you are going to lose him. He's a different guy now, so just give him the chance." Richard suggested wishing he could face the same dilemma.  
"What about L.A?" she asked "You know I want to go and you know why"  
"This girl showed up out of nowhere, just let her get better, let them get to know each other and you'll be moving to LA sooner than you think. "Richard said and added "Even though I have to point out that I hate to lose two of my best attendings."  
"What about your kid?" Addison asked.  
"Ellis put it up for adoption. That's all I know. I'm sure he or she wouldn't want to meet me anyway" Richard admitted  
"What makes you so sure about it?" Addison asked.  
"If she's anything like Ellis, she wouldn't." Richard replied thinking about Ellis' determination.  
"Sloan came to meet Mark, and just look at Meredith, she isn't anything like Ellis from all I heard." Addison said.  
"She's like her in way more ways than she realizes. Ellis stopped being herself when she got sick, Addison, but while she was healthy she always stood up for herself and what she wanted." Richard smiled "She used to bend the rules. Meredith is good at that. She stands up for herself"  
"Are you saying I should move to LA without Mark?" Addison asked  
"You should do what makes you happy, Addison. If your heart is truly set on moving, tell him!" Richard smiled and walked away.

"You kicked me out of the OR!" Mark shouted and sat down on the couch and took a deep breath trying to calm himself down.  
"You told Sloan she can stay with us. Why would you tell Sloan that she can live with us? You can't let Sloan stay with us without asking me." Addison said.  
"She's my kid just as much as Maria. I might not have been mature enough to be around until now, but now I am." Mark tried to explain.  
"Isn't this something you should have discussed with me?" Addison asked and Mark realized that she was right. He should have asked. He should have considered her feelings, but as much as he should have considered Addison's feelings Addison should have considered the whole situation.  
"Addison, I can't let her live somewhere out on the street, she's 18, she's pregnant and she just had surgery." Mark said.  
"She has a mother." Addison insisted.  
"Who kicked her out when she quit school because she found out she was pregnant." Mark added. It was true. Sloan had nowhere to go to. She was pregnant, had no highschool diploma and was without a ob "It's Christmas. Aren't you supposed to take care of the people who need help? She needs help raising this baby."  
"Is she going to move to L.A. with us? Because I still want to go there and you keep delaying the decision. You keep telling me that you haven't decided yet. " Addison said. She wanted to leave Seattle rather sooner than later. The package Naomi had offered her was too attractive to be passed on. She'd finally get to spend as much time with her daughter as she wanted. "Just tell me because I don't think you want to go."  
"I don't want to go, but I don't want to be apart from my daughter. And I don't want to be apart from you." Mark said and looked at her.  
"I'll tell Naomi that we are going to join the practice. She can draw up the paper work." Addison said and walked out of the room.

* * *

"Webber gave me a brilliant Christmas gift." Derek said when Meredith and he were leaving the hospital for the day.  
"Why?" Meredith wondered.  
"Starting next week you are on neuro rotation, so you are close to me 24/7." He smiled and kissed her.  
"More time with my husband seems like a nice present." She smiled.  
"Best Christmas present ever." He bit his lip and looked at her.  
"Best Christmas present ever." She agreed  
"and I got a research grant." He added nonchalantly.  
"Want to tell me about it?" Meredith wondered. She was surprised because he had never mentioned that he wanted to pursue another research project.  
"No." he answered "So what are you planning for today?"  
"Mom's house first and then we go to our house so Christopher can go to bed and Santa can visit us tonight?" Meredith said.  
"Sounds like a plan."

* * *

After they had arrived at the house Meredith noticed that Alex wasn't in the living room where almost everyone had gathered to share eggnog and listen to Christmas music. Meredith walked into Alex room. He had spent every single minute of free time up there. She had tried to talk to him, Lexie had tried to talk to him, everybody had tried to get him to move on, but she understood that he needed to be pushed "She's dead Alex. You can't keep sitting in your room all by yourself. It's Christmas Eve. Everybody is down in the living room. We even put up a tree because she'd have liked it. She went crazy on Christmas decorations during our intern year and she did a nice job last year."  
"She's dead. And I love her and I don't ever want to live without her even though she walked all over me. How can you love someone who keeps walking over you like this? I hate myself for this. All this passive aggressiveness, all the anger, I wasn't grieving, I was angry at me for allowing myself to like her because I deserve better. Who doesn't even tell you that she has cancer and is going to die and you never get to say goodbye." Alex said  
"We have no control over who we love." Meredith said.  
"We should have." Alex said. He wished he had.  
"But we don't. Do you know I felt guilty because I was so happy when she died?" Meredith asked and they both sat next to each other. "Want to come over to the living room now and open a few presents?"  
"What's the point? Nobody bought me something." Alex said "Cristina doesn't like me, Lexie hasn't looked at me since our last you- know, O'Malley hates me because Izzie liked me better than him."  
"I did buy you a gift Alex." Meredith said "and I'm pretty sure Lexie did so too"

 _We are born, we grow, we grow up, we get old, we die. We change. Not always in that order, sometimes we skip a step between birth and death, but change is the only constant and but sometimes things change for the worse and if they do, we would give anything to go back to where we were. But life doesn't work that way. The only way life ever goes is forward. So we have to adapt and cope with whatever life throws at us. Life only moves forward._

"I used to hate Christmas. When you are a foster kid they don't always get you presents and the only present my father bought for Christmas would be a bottle of liquor." Alex laughed.  
"My mom got me a suture kit for my tenth birthday. Or maybe she stole one from the hospital because by the time she noticed it was Christmas all the stores were closed and she couldn't buy me anything more appropriate for my age at that stage." Meredith giggled.  
"She probably stole it." Alex nodded and lay his head on Meredith shoulder.  
She continued to explain and he started to feel better "But it was the best gift I ever got. I used it until my fingers bled and then I tried to use it to stitch up my fingers and from that point on I knew that I wanted to be a surgeon. My mom never thought I had it in me, but bottom line, the best gifts come in surprising packages and maybe there something good can come out of this. So just come downstairs. They don't hate you. We've done this since intern year. We hated you back than so you doesn't know, but we've been doing this."

 _Doc had been running around the living room when Meredith and George walked in. They were surprised about the sight that presented itself to them. Doc had run into the living room and Meredith froze astounded by the level of decorating Izzie has taken. George came wearing his pajama's looking half asleep.  
"Looks like Santa threw up in here. George had said in shock.  
Meredith nodded and whispered "Just … go with it. We're being supportive."  
"Oh hey! What do you think" Izzie had asked with a huge fake smile on her face after she had noticed them "Did I go too overboard? Oh I know, I know sometimes I can go a little overboard.  
"No we love it." George managed to stutter in shock  
"It's great." Meredith lied  
"Oh yay! I love Christmas." Izzie had said with the biggest smile Meredith had ever seen on Izzie's face. Growing up in a trailer park had never given her too much of an opportunity to experience what other people would call the 'normal' Christmas experience. Now she had every intention to make up for it. She had finally found friends, a family she could share Christmas with.  
"We know." Meredith had nodded while looking at her living room that had turned in to Santa's wonderland.  
"Clearly" George replied with a forced smile on his face while Izzie turned back to continue to decorate the living room. When Meredith and George had given each other another look Izzie had turned around again with a big smile on her face. She had loved Christmas.  
A day later they had been lying on the ground next to each other with their heads under the Christmas tree and they had starred into the lit up and flashing tree. They had been a family and so much had changed since that day._

* * *

"It's your first Christmas as a family and you choose to spend it here?" Alex asked when he looked at Meredith, who was waiting in the gallery with Christopher. "They didn't page you."  
"I wasn't, but Derek was. I decided to go with him and show Christopher where mommy and daddy are working and I got to prepare my Critical care conference talk on the management of neurosurgery patients in the ICU, but I'm finished with that one now." Meredith explained kindly and looked at the stash of files in Alex hand "What are you looking at?"  
"Those are scans Dr. Robbins sent over from Africa. Those are cases that are too complicated. She can't do them by herself. She needs a second specialist. They don't have the resources, the equipment or the surgeons to perform those procedures." Alex explained and showed a few of the scans to Meredith. Most of them were cardio, but there were a few interesting general and neuro cases.  
"Looks like one hell of a surgery." Meredith said looking at a spina bifida case. She had never scrubbed in on a surgery like this and she'd love to learn the technique. Addison had performed two repairs in utero, but she had never scrubbed in on a surgery after the baby had been born.  
"It really does. I'd kill to get in on that case." Alex agreed and for a moment he wasn't thinking about Izzie or her death "You don't see those kinds of things around here. Pity, they are so far away."  
"We could change that." Meredith smiled.  
"What do you mean?" Alex wondered.  
"It's Christmas. People donate money to charities" Meredith smiled "We could fly them in, do the surgeries here or you could fly to Africa and help Dr. Robbins there."  
"Are you serious?" Alex wondered. It seemed like a long shot.  
"Yes, my mother used to do that a lot" Meredith said "she even went to Africa for a while to work for the UN and train surgeons in central Africa"  
"It's not feasible. You'd have to raise all this money. It's hell of expensive, you know how expensive OR time is and I'd have to talk to the Chief and Dr. Robbins and … " Alex said thinking he couldn't ever pull something like this off.  
"How bad do you want to scrub in on those surgeries?" Meredith laughed. "You can do this! I'll talk to Webber, I'll help you to raise the money, you do the rest. Do it. If you need help, just tell me, I want this spina bifida case in exchange, if that's okay."  
"Fine. You go and talk to Webber. I talk to Robbins." Alex said and got up  
"You've been talking to her?" Meredith asked surprised. She knew that Callie had tried to shut her out completely.  
"About once a month, we wanted to talk two days ago, but she didn't show up. I don't know. Probably bad connection or a blackout."

After having waited for two hours Meredith decided she'd leave the gallery. Derek wasn't finished anyway and she wanted to show Christopher the entire hospital, but it was different today. There were festive wreaths in the halls and everything seemed a little more friendly. Meredith was walking through the halls of the hospital with Christopher on her arm. It was one of those days, were everything was quiet and the hospital felt almost tranquil. She opened a window and it smelt like snow. The winter so far had been mild for Seattle's hemisphere, but she was sure it would start to snow any minute. She had always laughed the smell of snow when she was a child and she was sure it was in the air even though the forecast hadn't mentioned snow showers. After she had put on a coat and wrapped Christopher in a warm blanket she walked outside looking at the first few snowflakes that were flying through the air. "It's snowing, Christopher. Do you smell it? It's beautiful" she said and looked at her little boy. He looked at the smaller flakes and how they mealt on his own skin. "Look at the snow flakes, there aren't two that are completely alike. They all look different."  
"The world is so peaceful when it's snowing." A voice said behind her. She turned around and saw Derek"Ready to go?"  
"Yes, we were waiting for you" Meredith agreed and continued "Lizzie and Kathleen told me to say hey. They miss you and would have loved for us to be there. Your mom wanted me to tell you that she wants us to fly to New York next year because I never got to see where you grew into the handsome man you are today."  
"You find me handsome and you talked to my sisters?" Derek smirked.  
"I'm paraphrasing" Meredith laughed " – what your mom said. Hard to believe isn't it? We had this big fight on Christmas last year."  
"I tried." Derek said. He had, he had shown up at her doorstep and he had apologized. He had been perfect that day and he still was.  
"I know – it might take us a while, but we always come around" she nodded.  
"Let's not ruin our day thinking about that." Derek said kissing Christopher's forehead first and Meredith's forehead after that "I love you and there's a bunch of presents waiting for us underneath the tree."  
"What I was going to say was, look at us now. I love you Derek Christopher Shepherd." Meredith said and handed over Christopher to him.  
He smiled and looked at her. "and I love you. So what are you getting me for Christmas?"  
"I already got you a son and went through labor - that should account for something" Meredith joked "You'll have to wait and see."  
"Dr. Shepherd, we need you for an emergency craniotomy." Susan, one of the nurses, came running towards them.  
"Nice" Meredith muttered. This meant that he wouldn't be home for another three to four hours and that she'd probably spend the night without him.  
"Wanna scrub in?" Derek asked.  
"Sure. Susan, can you bring him to daycare?" Meredith asked and handed over Christopher to her.

* * *

Addison and Mark were sitting on the couch in their living room. It had been a long day at the hospital and they were both happy to be home and to be able to enjoy Christmas Eve, but Sloan was still under observation in the hospital and there was an elephant in the room that was too big to ignore. Addison had agreed to stay in Seattle a little bit longer until Sloan was ready to leave the hospital, but Mark's offer to let her move in with them.  
"Do you want more time because of her or do you want more time hoping I will change my mind?" Addison asked after Mark had put a few presents underneath their fake Christmas tree. While she had been married to Derek Addison had always loved Christmas. She loved buying décor and she had always enjoyed decorating the house, but this year everything was different. She wasn't pregnant and happy, she was a mother, she was tired all the time and her boyfriend had found out he'd become a grandfather soon and was refusing to move to the sunny city of Los Angeles with her. "Are you hoping that you won't have to make the decision I asked you to make months ago? You agreed to go after Sloan had surgery." She said and looked at him.  
"Addison." Mark said. He had thought about it over and over again. He did not want to leave Sloan like this, but he also wanted to make things right for Maria and Addison.  
"No Mark, I need an answer." Addison insisted. She needed to know whether he was going to come with her or not.  
"I love Maria. I know that. I would do anything to be close to her." Mark said "and I love you. I will move to LA."  
"Even pretend to be in love with her mother?" Addison asked and looked at him.  
"Addison, don't twist my words in my mouth. We will move to LA once Sloan is up on her feet, but she doesn't have anywhere to go to." Mark tried to defend his position while Addison just looked at him and noded in silence. The decision had been made. He was going to follow her. He was making the sacrifice she had asked him for, but she knew that something like this shouldn't be a sacrifice.

* * *

 _Looking back it's easy to see when a mistake has been made. But if we use our best judgment and listen to our hearts we're more likely to see that we chose wisely and avoid the deepest most painful regret of them all, the regret that comes from letting something amazing pass you by._

* * *

"Meredith, did you forget something?" Callie asked when she opened the door. Meredith and Derek had left 10 minutes ago and she thought that maybe they had to turn around because they had forgotten something here, but she was surprised to see who was standing on the other side of the door.  
The blonde woman was holding a suitcase and started to talk while Callie just starred at her with an open mouth. "Okay, so picture this- I'm in Africa, and everything's great, and the people are so nice, and the clinic is amazing, and I'm doing work that actually feels important. Like, I can- I can actually see that I'm making a difference, but I'm crying, like, constantly. And then this guy that work with at the clinic finally asks me what's wrong, and I say that I miss my girlfriend. Like- like, I really miss her. So then he asks me if I want to go back if they could replace me. And- and then I open my mouth to say "no" but what comes out weirdly instead is "yes." And so they did. And then I came back."  
"Well, you better should have stayed where you were. I was happy without you." Callie replied in a bitter tone "Super happy without you. I couldn't be happier."  
"You look really pretty" Arizona smiled and looking at her belly added"and you are having a baby."  
"Yes. I'm having a baby." Callie said and closed the door. They starred at the door from both sides of it. Arizona was back and Callie was confused what this would mean.


	19. Chapter 19

_Sorry for being so late, but I had a hard time writing some bits of this chapter._

 _Bhavyam1998: Thanks for the review. Mark has a decision to make and it doesn't come easy to him. We'll have to wait a few chapters to find out._  
 _Patsy: Thanks! The dark clouds are not going to affect Christopher's well being. As for where the African kid's project is going, you'll just have to wait and see. We are all waiting for them to have five chatty children with perfect hair though, do we? Hope you are going to enjoy this chapter!_  
 _Kiley: Thanks!_  
 _Melanie: Sorry for taking so long. I'm hoping that your curiosity didn't kill you._  
 _Dora: Hope you keep coming back for more._  
 _Carolyn: It's a nice present. Calzona are going to have to talk to each other soon._  
 _Ellen: I'm not so sure whether this chapter is fixing too much (my apologies), but I wrote the ending and eventually if I keep writing up to the point I intend to, they are going to be fine. But as for now, it's a rollercoaster ride!_  
 _Shelley: Glad you are still enjoying this. There won't be too many surprises in the next few chapters, but people are going to explore where they are going to go from where they are now._  
 _Darlene: Thank you! I hope you enjoy reading this today. I'm still not sure whether I want to watch the entire episode, but I guess I'm going to watch it tomorrow afternoon anyway._  
 _Susan: Yeah, I'm fairly busy, lot's of stress as work due to corporate strategic decisions so I'm not getting to do as much in my free time as I want to. Sorry for that! Hope you still enjoy the chapter nonetheless._  
 _Chrissy: Glad you are still reading =). Hope you are going to enjoy this chapter._

* * *

 **Chapter 19**

 _Say you're in the OR - repairing the Vena Ceva- when suddenly, everything goes to hell. So, you cut this, suture that and soon, that crappy situation is a thing of the past. Too bad you can't meet all of life's challenges with a surgical scalpel. I mean... you could try. But I'm pretty sure that would be considered assault._

"I'm going to kill that girl. If killing was not unlawful, she'd be buried already." Addison muttered after hanging up her phone. Lexie was standing close by and looked at Addison for a moment.  
"Are you okay, Dr. Montgomery?" Lexie asked cautiously. She knew it wasn't her business, but Addison seemed very uncomfortable.  
"I'm fine Dr. Grey." Addison was defensive.  
Lexie didn't intend to overstep boundaries and smiled softly "Okay, I'll be down in the plastics wing if you need me."  
Addison breathed in and quickly asked "Wait! What do you think about adoption?"  
"Why are you asking?" Lexie wondered. Had Meredith or Derek told Addison about Richard's and Ellis' child?  
"It's difficult. Sloan, Sloan-" Addison started. She wanted to say that she wasn't the brightest star in the night sky, but she had to find a nice way to word it and went for "She's, well, she's pretty simple, I'm not saying she's stupid, but"  
"She isn't the sharpest tool in the shed either." Lexie giggled. Mark had told her a lot about Sloan who was even more untalented in the kitchen than Meredith and had almost set Addison's kitchen on fire on more than one occasion.  
"Yeah, you know, and young. And her mom had her when she was young. And I don't think she's even thought about adoption. I don't think anybody's counseled her. I think she feels trapped" Addison started, but didn't get to finish what she was saying because she was interrupted by Lexie.  
"Because Mark wants this kid"  
"You two seem to be talking a lot." Addison concluded. She knew that she couldn't leave as long as Mark was so attached to this child.  
"Yeah, he helped me through a really tough time" Lexie nodded. Every time she had felt insecure, he was there.  
"Anyway I think it's my responsibility as her doctor to give her her options." Addison admitted.  
"And you are afraid that Mark is going to hate you" Lexie pointed out Addison's dilemma. "But it's your professional responsibility to inform your patient? I think it's pretty easy. You're her doctor, she's a kid"  
"- she's 18." Addison corrected her.  
"She doesn't have a high school diploma and the emotional maturity of a twelve year old" Lexie challenged Addison's opinion.  
"Is that your assessment or his?" Addison wondered. If Mark was thinking about Sloan this way it would certainly mean that she wasn't going to move out too soon.  
"Mine." Lexie said "But he talks about her a lot and "  
"He really wants this baby" Addison nodded "He wants to raise it with her. He wants her to move in with us. After Maria arrived he became this family man. I get that asking him to move to LA is a lot to ask, but I think it'll be worth it, for all of us. Just tell him that I love that he's doing this for us."  
"How do you know?" Lexie wondered.  
"He talks about you a lot." Addison admitted. "He sees you as his sister in law"  
"Want me to talk to her? Mark is never angry at me. I'd be easier for you" Lexie smiled.  
"It doesn't matter, she's still my patient. My call." Addison sighed.  
"Do you think she would consider an adoption?" Lexie wondered.  
"I know cases like that, and a lot of girls do." Addison said. She didn't really have a clue whether Sloan was truly attached to that baby.  
Lexie looked at her watch "I have to go. Dr. Sloan gets moody if he gets his coffee too late. But you know that"

* * *

"How's the research project going, Derek?" Richard asked walking into the attending lounge where Derek was sitting at the table looking at his laptop. Derek looked up and closed the spreadsheet he had worked on.  
"It's not progressing as fast as I hoped it would." He admitted "I'm stuck in the lab all day and hardly get to see the inside of an OR. I miss the OR."  
"Have you found enough patients to start with the next phase yet?" Richard wondered. Derek and he had discussed the project in detail and it was Richard who had helped Derek to find a research institute for cooperation.  
"No, it's difficult" Derek said. He had monitored a few patients, but their disease had been either too advanced or they had other diseases that made it impossible for them to participate.  
"At least your wife is blossoming in the OR." Richard smiled.  
"How was the kidney transplant?" Derek asked referring to Meredith's Christmas present. He had persuaded Richard to let Meredith do an organ transplant.  
"She did very well, Derek even though I have to admit that this is an unusual present." Richard admitted "Dr. Nelson is quite impressed with her skill level, too. If you don't keep you game up she'll pass you by sooner than you anticipated."  
"She's really amazing." Derek nodded and couldn't help but smile thinking about his wife.  
"Her mother would be proud." Richard admitted and thought about the way Meredith had extracted the kidney from the donor. She had her mother's hand.  
"I'm doing this for her, but you probably know that" Derek said referring to his research.  
"If I see her in the OR I can't help but wonder what it would be like to see both of them in there, working together." Richard told him.  
"Have you ever tried to find out more about Ellis' second child?" Derek wondered. He knew that if it was his child, he'd probably want to find out everything.  
"I stay awake at night these days and wonder what she's like. I wish Ellis had told me." Richard smiled "But I don't think I'd want to meet me."

* * *

"You paged." Meredith said as she entered the room where Dr. Nelson was looking at scans.  
"Look at the scans. Patient got referred to us from Seattle Press. He's in for pre op testing today. I need you to run the tests Dr. Grey" Dr. Nelson told her and handed her the file. Meredith pulled out a print from the CT picture and looked at a butterfly tumor.  
"Oh my god, it's magnificent, it's beautiful. A huge beautiful ependymoma." She said in admiration.  
"It's a tumor, a tricky one." Nelson added without sounding too fascinated by the tumor in front of him. .  
"Just look at it. It's magical." Meredith said and showed him the print.  
"You and your husband have a lot in common, Dr. Grey." He remarked amused and began to quiz her. "What approach would you consider for the resection?"  
"I would do an intraventricular resection." Meredith answered confidently. She knew that it's what Derek would have done.  
Dr. Nelson nodded and said "Fine, you can do it."  
"You are going to let me resect the tumor?" Meredith wondered surprised. It was something Derek wouldn't have ever considered to let her do.  
"I don't see a reason not to, your handy work is good and you did a fine job assisting me last week." He said and noticed that Meredith's face lid up. Everything about this year had been exciting. Ever since Christopher had been born her medical career had been skyrocketing to a whole new level and this would be another highlight.  
"Don't get me wrong. It's a wonderful opportunity, but don't give it to me because my mother was famous or my husband was my boss. My mother was right. I shouldn't be a surgeon." Meredith said when self doubt hit her. They patient's life would be in her hand.  
" , I don't mean to overstep boundaries here, but are you sure? We all have those days or weeks where it feels like every move we do is wrong. We all have them. Just because you are feeling like this right now doesn't mean you don't belong in that OR or deserve to be given that chance." Dr. Nelson encouraged her to believe in herself.  
"Thanks" Meredith smiled "I'll be in the skills lab"

* * *

Teddy had arrived a few hours ago and had been pulled into four emergency surgeries on her first day. It had been an impossible day that dragged on and on. She was happy to find a familiar face in the attending lounge. "You are not engaged to Sarah anymore." She said as she walked in.  
"No, it didn't work out. Too many things changed after my second tour. She couldn't take it." Owen said. They both knew what had happened to his convoy.  
"You could have called. We could have picked up where we left off. There has always been more between…" Teddy started, but Owen interrupted her before she got to finish what she wanted to say. "I'm with Cristina. Just so you know."  
She hadn't expected to hear this. They had always been caught up to each other, but either Owen or her weren't available. "Wow, so I'm your little gift for her?" she said upon the realization that this hadn't changed.  
"Cristina is special; I never met anyone like her." Owen said.  
"You are in love."  
"I've never felt for anyone the way I feel for her." He nodded.  
"I'm glad you are happy." Teddy said feeling torn apart inside.  
"I don't know if I'm happy, but you are here and I missed you too and I'm glad you accepted Richard's offer." Owen said. "Welcome to Seattle Grace Mercy West"  
"Cristina, what is she like? As a surgeon?" Teddy wondered and Owen smiled. "She asked to be on your service, did she?"  
"You know her well." Teddy laughed. The moment she had set a foot into the hospital Cristina had been trying to get into the OR with her.  
"I've never seen a better cardio thoracic surgeon in my life." Owen said.  
"I'm offended." Teddy giggled.  
"She's worth your time, Teddy. You'll never find a better resident." Owen repeated. "She's special."  
"What about coffee?" Teddy asked "We have a lot to catch up on"

* * *

"Look at him. He's so cute." Meredith smiled as she looked at Christopher who tried to crawl. "How he moves his little hands and feet to move forward."  
"We should get the whole place checked."  
"They already baby proofed the house before we moved in" Meredith reminded him. Sometimes she couldn't help but wonder why Derek tried to be so overprotective.  
"We should check it again." Derek insisted.  
"I checked it six months ago; do you think everything broke down?" Meredith mocked Derek „Our son is safe. How was your day?"  
"Nothing interesting, I clipped an aneurysm; I fixed a spinal injury, prepared a few things for my trial and went home to you and Christopher. I have to admit I am kind of bored." Derek admitted.  
"Shadow Shepherd and I found the most amazing tumor I've ever seen. It's a miracle the patient is still alive" Meredith said and explained every tiny detail of the tumor to him. She had spent hours in the skills lab to access which part of the tumor she had to approach in which way.  
"Don't call him Shadow Shepherd" Derek told her.  
"Dr. Nelson and I found an amazing tumor and tomorrow I'm going to do the debunking" Meredith repeated in a way that wouldn't get her fired.  
"I haven't operated on that in ages. Ever since Chris was born I try to limit my working hours and all this paper work after the merger and the research project with Washington State is just exhausting. The board wants my department to create a new fellowship position. So I have dozens of applicants to screen. It just never ends." Derek sighed. "He missed the day to day surgical work."

* * *

A monitor was beeping rhythmically in the background when Addison entered Sloan's room. Mark had set it up just to be sure. It was monitoring the baby's heart beat. The child was strong. Addison said down next to Sloan's bed and asked "So I have to ask you this. Has anyone ever talked to you about adoption?"  
"What, like when you pick a family from the "penny saver"?" Sloan joked.  
"No. That's just in "Juno"." Addison replied "In real life, there are agencies, and all they do is screen families. They find you safe, wonderful families who would love your baby as much as you do. There are agencies. In fact, we have one in the hospital."  
Sloan looked concerned and looked at Addison "Don't tell Mark that we're having this conversation, 'cause I know that he'd freak out, and, like, all my stuff is still at your apartment."  
"No, I'm-I'm here as your doctor" Addison smiled "So I can't tell anyone anything that we're talking about unless you give me the permission to.". Sloan smiled and Addison continued to explain everything there was about the possible adoption process "And-and for the record, I think that you could be a great mom, Sloan, and I know Mark would be an amazing—"  
"So these agencies like, what exactly do they do?" Sloan asked immediately.

* * *

Meredith was looking at the tumor scans again when April walked in and took them. "Doctor Shepherd has requested these scans. He decided to do the resection himself."  
"Oh no, that's my I am debunking, it's my tumor." Meredith said and held on to the scan while April tried to pull back. "It's Dr. Shepherd's tumor now and I'm going to scrub in."  
Derek walked in and they both looked at him. "Derek? What's going on here?" Meredith wondered.  
"It wasn't your surgery. It was Nelson's." Derek said.  
"It was beyond his skill level. I mean that's what you implied at least" April added.  
"My diagnosis, my tumor, my debunking." Meredith looked at Derek with angry eyes "Can I scrub in at least?"  
"You're on Nelson's service this week. If I switch you, it's going to look like favoritism." Derek smiled.  
"Dr. Nelson has been given an aneurysm." April said and handed her the file.  
"You stop talking." Meredith shot April a glare.  
"Calm down, Meredith. People are starting to stare." Derek told her.  
"You stole my surgery." Meredith yelled and every one close by turned their heads while Meredith walked away and yelled "He stole my surgery."

"I heard Shepherd took your surgery" Cristina nodded when she saw Meredith eating a chocolate bar in the resident's lounge.  
"How did you hear that?" Meredith asked while chewing.  
"You yell very loud." Jackson answered.  
"Yeah, well, I have to hold a retractor for shadow Shepherd while Derek debunks my tumor." Meredith complained to her friends "So yes, I yell very loud."  
"Screw him." Cristina concluded.  
"I told him about the tumor last night and what does he do… he takes advantage of what I told him in private and takes away this surgery from me. And I hate myself because all I can think of is how much I hate him right now for doing it. It feels like I'm turning into Ellis." Meredith ranted  
"Screw him."  
"Or you think of yourself as one of the who's down in whoville" Jackson suggested.  
"What?" Meredith asked.  
"You know, the Grinch, he came down and stole all their presents and they didn't let that ruin Christmas for them. They came out on Christmas morning and they sang." Jackson explained and smiled "It's not about the surgery; it's about the lives we save. You are going to walk into that surgery and you're going to sing."  
"You are weird." Meredith giggled "I have to go."

* * *

Mark and Addison were walking up and down in the attending lounge. It had been twenty minutes and they were still shouting unpleasantries at each other. "Why would you tell Sloan about adoption? We could have raised this kid!" Mark yelled.  
"It's her child and her choice, Mark. Yes, we could have helped her, but she wasn't ready to be a mom and they are a lot of nice families out there who'd love to have a child." Addison defended her decision.  
"She could have been our child." Mark said.  
"Mark, she was my patient. I would have done this with any other patient." Addison said. "It wasn't about you"  
"But she's not any other patient. You can't go and decide things like that on your own."  
"Mark, it's her decision." Addison said calmly.  
"Addison, and it's mine" Mark said referring to their constant battling over L.A.  
"I should have went to L.A. weeks ago. I only stayed because of you and Sloan." Addison screamed. "I should have left without you"  
"You took my grandchild from me. We are over." Mark yelled.  
"We've been over a long time ago." Addison said and stormed out the room.

* * *

"You are not mad at him?" Meredith wondered as they were starting to prepare the patient in the OR.  
"He's my boss." Nelson said and tried to remain impartial. He had stopped to care which patients he was operating on a long time ago.  
"Well, I'd be mad at him if I were you." Meredith admitted.  
"He's my boss and a very capable neurosurgeon." Nelson insisted in an overly professional tone.  
"You are mad at him." Meredith concluded.  
"Dr. Grey, your pager, it's the daycare." One of the nurses said after one of the pagers had gone off.  
"Well, I'm sure they paged Derek too. Let him take care of it. I'm in surgery and he's not because he's preparing the surgery he stole from me." She said passive aggressive.  
"You are mad at him." Dr. Nelson noted in an amused tone.  
"Well, he's my husband and I tell him about my day and about the tumor and he goes and steals it. You'd be pissed to." Meredith suggested.  
"Dr. Grey. Why don't we focus on our patient?" Dr. Nelson tried to focus on the patient in front of him.  
"Yeah, sorry. I'm going to be a who's own in Whoville now." Meredith mumbled. Jackson had been right.

* * *

Meanwhile Mark was lying on a bed in an empty on call room starring at the ceiling and thinking about Sloan and Addison and L.A. and being a grand father.  
"What are you doing here this time of the day?" he wondered when Lexie walked in and kicked the trash can.  
"Thinking about my life and why I'm the rebound for everyone. What about you?" she asked.  
"„Thinking about the moment I became a father." He said "I have a kid."  
"You have two kids." Lexie said " – At least."  
"Fine, I have two kids." Mark smiled and looked at Lexie who was sitting on the bed next to his.  
"and a beautiful girl friend." Lexie added.  
"who forces me to do something I don't want. I wish she was more like you. I never have to think what I'm going to say, it just comes flying right out of my mouth." Mark said and Lexie nodded "It feels right"  
"Yeah, and there'd be a lot I could teach you" Mark said softly. Upon realizing that this sounded inappropriate given his reputation he added " – in the OR. But Addison as using me as her punching bag, it's like everyone lost their respect for me"  
"I respect you as a man" Lexie said and pulled her scrub top over her head "as a surgeon" she added and took off her shirt "as a teacher, I respect you. So teach me." She said and approached him only wearing a bra and her scrub pants.  
"Wait, don't do this, stop." Mark said as he lips started to touch his.  
"Teach me." She insisted and the sweet embrace of her kiss made Mark forget about all the pain he felt. Addison had broken up with him.  
"No, Lexie, we can't do this, you are little Grey" he said "and I have a kid. I'm your teacher."  
"So teach me." She whispered and unbuttoned his shirt.

Hormones were firing through their bodies as they gave in to their inner desires. Both of them had been hurt and both tried to pick up the pieces.  
"This was bad. We shouldn't do this." Mark said upon realizing what had just happened. He had slept with his best friend's sister in law. He had probably destroyed every chance of ever being happy with Addison again, but it felt right at the same time.  
"But it feels so good. Just focus on how good it feels right now." Lexie whispered lying next to him.  
"It does…" After they were finished they both lay next to each other realizing the consequences of what they had done. "Little Grey, this can't work. Move on! You are confused and messed up, just move on. We can never speak about this again"

* * *

"Your pager keeps going off, Dr. Grey." Dr. Nelson said when Meredith's pager started to go off for the 12th time during the surgery.  
"It's the daycare again." The nurse said.  
"Dr. Shepherd can take care of that, he's not in surgery, is he?" Meredith concluded. She knew he wasn't in surgery because he was preparing for the surgery she had been supposed to do.  
"No, Dr. Grey. His surgery is scheduled for later today." The nurse nodded.  
The pager went off again and Meredith rolled her eyes mumbling "Again."  
"Dr. Grey, it's only an aneurysm here, you can check on your son. It seems to be important if they keep paging you." Dr. Nelson suggested.  
"Thank you Dr. Nelson, I really have to go." Meredith said and hurried to get to the room she had been paged from.

 _"What is it, Dr. Cameron?" Ellis Grey looked at the resident who had answered the phone in the OR.  
"Your daughter… " he said. She was sorting through the equipment she needed to perform a whiple and was about to start.  
Ellis rolled her eyes and seemed annoyed. "… what did this child do this time? Why can't she give me a break?"  
"She's in the ER, she has a broken arm and needs to be taken to surgery and we need you to sign a few forms." He said.  
"Get the papers, I'll sign them here." She commanded.  
"Don't you want to see her first?" he wondered.  
"Give me the papers" she insisted "I assume whatever orthopedist is down there knows how to do their job, so just give me the papers and don't bother me while I'm preparing for surgery." _

"What's the matter with him?" Meredith asked the nurse who was trying to comfort Christopher who was lying on the bed.  
"He fell and won't stop crying? Peds says he's fine." The nurse said.  
"What happened?" Meredith asked.  
"He tried to pull himself up, his hand slipped and he bruised his knee." The nurse summarized what had happened in daycare.  
"Has peds done a neuro work up? He might have hit his head." Meredith wondered, but didn't like the answer so much  
"Dr. Kepner said he's fine." The nurse said. "Dr. Shepherd sent her down to check on him"  
"Alright, baby, it's fine." Meredith tried to comfort Christopher, who slowly calmed down. "It was just a fall, nothing serious. Mommy is here, you don't have to be scared. Mommy is here and she'll take care of you. I'll always be there for you. I'm close to my 80 hour limit so I'm going to leave early today and take you out to the park"

* * *

Meredith sat on a bench in the park and was trying to make Christopher sit down next to her."Come sit with me, little guy. I have your favorite apple banana mash here. It's surprising you like apples so much. I don't really like them and your auntie Lexie hates them. Maybe it's because your daddy is a health nut." She said and moved a spoonful to his mouth.  
"Yammy, yammy. You really like that" she giggled as he smiled.  
The older lady next to her smiled as she observed the scene "You are great with him."  
"Thank you" Meredith smiled  
"It's hard to raise them. I had four and there wasn't a single day where I wasn't worried about them. Now they are grown up and I have to say that nothing changes. You don't stop worrying" she laughed.  
"It's part of the job unless you are an ass that is more concerned with his own career." Meredith muttered "Sorry, that was inappropriate. I'm just stressed"  
"Well, sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself, dear." The old lady said and got up "Have a good day."

* * *

"You are still trying to organize everything by yourself?" Arizona wondered when she found Alex over dozens of pages of paper work for the African project.  
"I'm trying to. Meredith helped me a little by getting Webber and the board on board, but taking care of the visa and the flights and everything is a whole lot harder than I anticipated. Have you ever tried to find an interpreter for Swahili?" he looked at her.  
"I think you are impressive, Alex. But you have to go home, it's not healthy to spend your free time at the hospital." Arizona said with a smile on her face.  
"I could tell you the same thing. You haven't been home since you came back."Alex replied and Arizona sat down next to him-  
"I don't have a home Karev, and I still have to figure out a way to talk to Callie."  
"You know if Izzie was still alive and in the hospital I'd walk right up to her and talk to her." Alex admitted.  
"But you can't… because she's dead" Arizona said and realized "She's the reason you are spending every waking moment here. Alex, you have to move on, you have to get out of here and move on with your life."  
"I would have married her, I never thought I'd be the marrying kind, but I would have married her, we would have gotten married and we would have had kids. We could have been happy." He said thinking about the future they might have had.  
"You can still be happy. You just have to figure out a way to be happy with someone else – or by yourself, but you do have to figure out a way to be happy again."

* * *

"Hey, I was looking for you." Callie said when she found George sitting on a bench outside of the hospital.  
George looked up. He was surprised to actually see her looking for him. "What do you want? Is there something wrong?"  
"No, I'm fine, at least I think I'm fine. I was fine, but… I don't know if you know, but I guess… " Callie ranted. George looked at her and wondered why she was talking to him. So far she had made it very clear that she didn't want him to be involved with their child and they haven't been friends in a long time.  
"Callie what's the matter?" George wondered.  
"Arizona is back and she told me she's going to start working here again. Webber gave her her old job back." Callie said. On the outside she tried to keep her guard up, but she wasn't fine.  
"Are you okay with that?" he wondered, but Callie didn't pay much attention to him and kept on ranting about Arizona. "There's not much I can do. I'm a surgeon, my job is to save lives and an annoying ex girlfriend is not going to stop me. I'm a surgeon, I have a gift. I hold a scalpel and I give someone another chance, a chance to see another beautiful day, a chance for another smile. It's a gift. I shouldn't let her stop me from doing this." Callie looked up and saw the sun setting painting the sky in all shades of pink and red. "It's a beautiful view."  
"Yeah, it's a beautiful view. How's the baby?" George wondered.  
"I think she is fine. I have a stomach ache, but I guess that was the Chinese take out I had last night." Callie smiled. "Thanks, George!"

* * *

Alex walked into a closet looking for medical supplies and heard a quiet sob. He looked into the corner where the noise came from and saw Lexie who was crying her eyes out. "Are you okay, Lexie?"  
"No, Alex, I'm not okay, I'm an emotional mess." She looked at him and continued to cry.  
"Want to help me with my presentation? It doesn't help to deal with whatever mess you have going on, but at least it keeps you distracted!" he suggested. He wasn't any good at comforting girls who were crying over .  
"Are those the files Dr. Robbins gave you?" Lexie asked and tried to dry her tears.  
"Yes, and I have to arrange everything. I need to look over the files, estimate how many surgeons and other OR stuff I need and how long it's going to take. We are going to present everything to Webber the day after tomorrow." He said. "Are you in?"  
"What do I get if I help you?" Lexie wondered.  
"We could have dinner together –" Alex suggested "and you get to spend time with me. Do you care to share why your life is a mess?"  
"A guy. How about you?"  
"A girl." Alex sighed "Let's go out together"

* * *

"Where were you? I was concerned." Derek wondered when Meredith was walking into the house.  
"You were concerned?" Meredith asked in disbelief. He didn't reply immediately and she started to unload her anger on him. "First you steal my surgery and then you force me to scrub out of mine because you don't answer your pager and they start to request me. Our son was hurt and scared! When I walked into surgery I was ready to be in Whoville and then you pull that crap. You could have went there and calmed him down before surgery."  
"He bruised his knee, he wasn't seriously injured." Derek replied and tried to justify why he didn't answer the page the daycare workers had send to him. He looked at Meredith and asked "Whoville?"  
"Whoville burnt down." Meredith replied coldly. " He bruised his knee and he was scared. He was scared enough to not stop crying and have the daycare page someone from peds because they thought that there might be more. I had to leave the OR because apparently your pre-ops are more important"  
"I never said they were and I sent Kepner" Derek yelled.  
"Your actions speak louder than words." Meredith said and bid her lips "We can apologize over and over, but if your actions don't change, the words become meaningless."  
"Are you saying I'm a bad father?" Derek asked.  
"Today you were. A bad father and a bad husband. You are supposed to have my back. I was in surgery and you weren't" Meredith said.  
"I was working. I was doing my job." Derek yelled, but Meredith wasn't prepared to back down from this fight. "So was I. And I still found the time to take care of our son." She screamed.  
"I'm the head of my department."  
Meredith stood there with her mouth opened. She swallowed and said "And I'm always going to be the stupid intern that fell in love with you. That's how you see me."  
"You know that's not true." He insisted.  
"Well, you act like it."

* * *

For a moment he didn't say anything and realized that she was right. He had been acting like what he had been doing was more important. "Let me make it up to you." He said.  
"How? By giving me the opportunity to debulk a tumor just like that, you know that is a rare tumor! You know I would have dissected that tumor if you did not steal it. That's not making things up to me. That's giving me back what you took away from me. By taking over chores? Well, we are married, it's something you are doing anyway. I do the laundry, you do the cleaning." Meredith said "This isn't 1975."  
"Meredith, I'm the head of the department. I have every right to take on the cases I want to." He said.  
"You were jealous of me. I told you about my day and the tumor and you were jealous because I had the opportunity to dissect a tumor like that and you were stuck in your office all day so you took it upon yourself and pulled ranks. Just admit it, you were jealous!" Meredith yelled. She knew that if she had remained quiet he wouldn't have even looked at the surgery.  
"I was not jealous." He insisted.  
"Fine, you weren't. But if I tell you something about my day here, I want you to act like my husband, I don't want you to steal my surgery because you get interested in my case. I'll go now and see whether they need someone in the ER tonight. I can't stay here." Meredith said and left again.

* * *

"Thanks for doing this." Alex said when Lexie walked down the stairs in a short black dress that perfectly complimented her body. She looked beautiful.  
"Thanks for doing what?" Lexie wondered.  
"Going on a date with me, making sure I move on" Alex replied and added " -emotionally." As he realized she might think he was talking about sex otherwise.  
"I care about you and this isn't a date." Lexie replied thinking about the last time a guy had invited her for dinner.  
"Two steaks, basket of carbs, wine, a guy and a beautiful girl, sounds like a date to me" Alex answered amused "A pretty good one."

"So you are footing the bill?" Lexie asked while looking through the menu. Alex had surprised her. He had been a true gentleman.  
"That was the plan. I'm not a douche" Alex said. Lexie didn't say anything, so Alex looked up from his plate. He searched her face and concluded "… you look surprised."  
"Sorry, it's just the last guy I dated was…" Lexie said without mentioning it had been George.  
"an idiot?" Alex wondered knowing whom she was talking about.  
"Yah, you could say that." Lexie giggled and playfully placed a bite in her mouth.  
"Not much hope things are going to improve for you then." Alex joked. Even though this wasn't a classical date it was certainly going well.  
"You are not a bad guy." Lexie smiled.  
"What makes you think that?" Alex wondered. So far their relationship had been about occasional hook ups whenever one of them would be sad.  
"Well, Meredith likes you." Lexie said and stole Alex's last frie.  
"Are we going to keep talking or are you actually going to eat this steak?" Alex wondered secretly hoping that she was full.  
"You don't have to ask. I eat almost everything." Lexie said "Well, except apples, I hate them. They shouldn't be allowed to be a fruit."  
"You have strong feelings about apples." Alex laughed.  
"How's that African children thing going?" Lexie wondered while cutting her steak with almost surgical precision.  
"Webber and Arizona said I can do it, if I manage to raise the necessary funds." Alex started to explain and continued to tell her everything he had done so far for the project. For the first time in weeks he was lost in the moment and lost in Lexie's captivating smile.

* * *

 _It's a little bit horrifying just how quickly everything can fall to crap. Sometimes, it takes a huge loss to remind you of what you care about the most. Sometimes, you find yourself becoming stronger as a result. Wiser, better equipped to deal with the next disaster that comes along. Sometimes... but not always._

"Time of death 8.27" Callie said and threw away her gloves.  
"I can't believe this is happening again. This sucks!" Meredith muttered. Too many patients had died in the past few weeks.  
"This sucks?" Callie asked and started to rant "Stop, Meredith! Honestly, stop whining! You think you got it bad because a few of your patients died? You don't. You have a healthy kid and a supportive husband and you are healthy. You are living the McDream! There's this sickening happiness surrounding you…Wanna know whose life sucks? Mine! My life sucks! Ugh…"  
"Are you okay, Callie?" Meredith looked at Callie.  
"Yeah, I'll be okay if you just stop bitching about how difficult your life is! It isn't! Ugh…" Callie got defensive. As she said those words Meredith saw blood running down Callie's legs changing the colors of her light blue scrubs to red. Callie noticed that Meredith was looking at her legs and looked down starting to hyperventilate.  
"Callie, sit down, you are bleeding. You have to calm down. I'll page Addison!" Meredith said and offered Callie the chair the anaesthesiologist had been sitting on "She needs to have a look at you." If they wanted to save the baby, she needed to get Addison into the OR fast.


	20. Chapter 20

_Sorry for taking so long! It's been a while since the last update, but I had a lot on my mind! I've been working almost 55 hours last week and helped friends moving on my day off, so I was rather busy and hardly got to write the story. On top of that my laptop broke down and I had to retrieve most of the data (and buy a new one) before I was able to continue writing. This chapter hasn't been too much fun to write as there are still a few paragraphs I don't like and I spent more time writing the dialogue for the very last chapter of this story instead. I hope you still enjoy reading. Interested to know are you Slexie or Maddison?_

 _Patsy: Yeah, Derek acted like an ass and there's still a little more tension between Mer and Derek. As far as April goes: she did like she was told._

 _Bhavyam1998: Thank you for your feedback._

 _Chrissy: Big drama ahead. Very big drama._

 _Dora: Yeah, Derek has been McAss in the last chapter._

 _Sara: Hope you are enjoying this chapter!_

 _Ellen: Hope you enjoy this chapter!_

 _Susan: I hope you are going to enjoy this chapter. Quite a lot of MerDer interaction and lot's on Lexie, Mark and Addison (I'm not quite sold on how these three are going to end up)._

 _Crissy: Hope you are getting off the cliff now!_

 _Melanie: Sorry for taking so long. You surely must be delighted to have met Patrick._

 _Charlene: Sorry for taking so long to update. You are right about the drama._

 _Chloe: Thank you for taking the time to review!_

 _Darlene: Thanks! I totally agree, it's weird to see Mer on her own on the show. It's been really painful to watch._

 _Linda: Thanks for the review!_

* * *

 **Chapter 20**

 _Surgeons can't be lazy. The risks are too great. The second we stop pushing ourselves, something terrible happens. Something we never see coming._

„Silvia Scususo, 28, suffered third degree burns while trying to escape a house fire. She's bradycardic." The paramedic shouted. Lexie stood in front of the gurney and froze. The woman grabbed her Shirt and pulled her a little closer to herself and whispered. „I'm pregnant, please make sure my baby is fine."  
Lexie nodded and screamed to one of her interns „Page Teddy Altman, Addison Montgomery and Mark Sloan." Another intern tried to help her to get the woman into one of the separate trauma rooms. „I'll make sure you get the best care possible." Lexie said with a smile.  
„Can you call my husband for me?" the black haired woman asked Lexie „He's overseas. His name is Anthony"  
„Where is he?" Lexie wondered. „My sister and her husband are in Bahrain at the minute"  
„In Iraq. He didn't want to come back for another 7 weeks, the baby is due in 8 weeks." She said before shivering „Hell, can you get m a blanket I'm freezing."  
„I'm afraid those are your neurons! But it's a good sign! It really is. Don't worry. I'm going to sedate you to make the pain manageable" Lexie said.

„What do we got, Grey?" Addison Montgomery entered the room and looked at the sedated patient.  
„Burn victim, 32 weeks pregnant. I thought you had to check if the baby was okay." Lexie summarized and another person entered the room. Addison and Lexie both looked at the surgeon who had just entered the room.  
„Oh hey, I didn't know you were…" Mark said with a little hesitation.  
„Dr. Sloan, I need you to examine her burns." Lexie said. „She needs help. She's all alone and she needs someone"  
„What are you doing here, Addison?" Mark wondered.  
„… reminding you that you can't live without me." Addison said slightly annoyed. So far she had done her best trying to avoid him, but now she had to deal with him. He looked annoyed and she knew he was going to yell at her so she added „Relax, I'm doing my job. Grey paged me. She's pregnant. I'm just making sure the baby is okay."  
Mark swallowed and tried hard to focus on his work. He walked out of the room and told Lexie „I have to get her into the OR immediately. I don't like how her skin is looking like right now, I have to make a few cuts to ensure that the skin transplants are going to work. You can scrub in if you want to."

* * *

At the same time Meredith and Jackson were rounding on patients with Derek. While everyone on the outside might have considered Meredith and Derek to be one of the happiest couples they ever met, the tension between them was more than noticeable in professional situations even though both of them tried their best to act as normal as possible in front of the patients. „What's up? Ms. Radigan, you're still having these headaches and ringing in the ears?" Derek asked when he walked into the room of a woman in her mid 50s who was waiting there with one of her friends

„All day long. It's driving me crazy." She admitted. Derek opened her chart and pulled out her latest scan while Meredith and Jackson observed.  
„It's caused by a buildup of fluid in your skull. So what we will do is insert a shunt, and that will relieve the pressure on your brain." Derek explained and showed what he was going to do.  
"What do you mean, "we"? You're doing the actual tube part in the brain, right, - N - not them?" the friend asked.  
"Excuse her. She's a school teacher. She talks to everyone like they're hiding gum behind their back." The patient joked and everyone smiled,  
„that's all right." Derek said „She can ask questions. Dr. Grey and Dr. Avery are residents. They're very talented. One of them will be performing the procedure, and I will be observing and stepping in if something happens- which it wont."  
"A trainee cutting into Ellie's brain? No." the friend insisted  
„I know it sounds like a leap, but these doctors study and assist for years. At some point, we have to let them operate. That's how we make new surgeons." Derek said, but the friend was concerned and insisted. "Let them learn on someone else."  
"Who, someone who's too scared to interrogate the doctors?" the patient tried to calm her friend down "They have to learn on someone. Might as well be an old lady."  
"You're my old lady." the friend said with a smile on her face. "This should be my call."  
„I won't let them move a muscle without my direction and approval." Derek assured both of them.  
"You're a teacher, Joanne. Let the kids learn." The patient insisted and looked at her friend who smiled and looked at the two young surgeons. "She's my life. She has been my life for 40 years."

They walked out of the room and Jackson looked at Derek while Meredith tried to avoid him as good as she could considering that she was on his service „Who gets to cut?" the young Avery asked.  
„I want to get a look at both of you with a drill before I decide who gets the shunt." Derek smiled and looked at Meredith who still tried to look away „Skills lab seems like a fair way to go. Don't let me regret this! I usually wouldn't let you go near this surgery, but the Chief told us to delegate more of our work to residents and as one of you insisted they could have debulked a tumor the other week, I'd like to see your skill in the lab."  
Jackson coughed "Competing with the wife? Like that's not a stacked deck."  
„Well, it's a game, really. So all you have to do is win, which you won't." Meredith teased him,

* * *

„Callie… um… I came to check on…." Arizona walked into Callie's room. She had been on bed rest for a few hours and Addison had started an IVF to stop pre term labor. Arizona wasn't sure what do say and mumbled „Are you okay? I just wanted to make sure you …"  
Callie's eyes were full of fear as she looked at Arizona and yelled „Do I look okay? No, I'm not okay, I'm definitely not okay. I'm on bedrest because I almost lost my baby." Her voice echoed in the hall and were followed by a few seconds of silence.  
„I'm here for you. I came back because of you." Arizona said cautiously. She looked at Callie and it broke her heart that she couldn't stand by her side.  
„Well, I never asked you to. I don't need your help." Callie said „Last time I talked to you I ruined Africa for you!"  
„You did ruin it for me!" Arizona nodded. „Because I noticed, I realized that I can't live without you."  
„I can live without you." Callie said. Was it really too late Arizona wondered as Callie continued „It took me a long time to figure out how, but I can live without you."  
As they both stood there neither one knowing what to say a nurse came in and looked at Callie „You paged. What's the matter?"  
„Get her out of my room! I don't want to talk to her." Callie demanded.  
The nurse looked at Arizona. She saw the scrubs and the lab coat „But she's a doctor." The nurse said and Arizona tried to reason with Callie. „Callie, come on! It doesn't have to be like that." All she needed was a little time to explain.  
„She's a pediatric surgeon. Last time I checked I wasn't a child." Callie snapped „So come on, get her out of my room! I don't want to see her."  
„Callie, we need to talk!" Arizona insisted and her eyes filled with tears.  
„I don't know what we would have to talk about! We are over." Callie told her.  
A tear ran down Arizona's cheek as she said „I love you Callie."  
„You really have to leave Dr. Robbins" the nurse said with a friendly smile „Dr. Montgomery said she has to avoid stress."  
„I'm going to leave this room now because I love you and you need to rest" Arizona said.  
„I'll be more relaxed and rested once you are gone." Callie smiled while Arizona walked out of the room.

* * *

„Addison left me. But it's not your fault and I'm still trying to be your dad. I'll help you to take care of the baby."  
„Mark, I have to talk to you. I can't raise this baby." Sloan told him.  
„I'll raise it for you, I'm a great dad." Mark encouraged her.  
„We both know that if you raise that baby, it's still going to be my child. You get a chance to be free, to grow up without the responsibility of a child. You did pretty good for yourself by not having to take care of me. Don't you think I deserve that too?" Sloan asked.  
„I'm going to support you." Mark tried to reassure her.  
„They already found a family. They are going to love that child."

* * *

„What's his problem?" Cristina wondered while observing how Jackson threw away half a dozen eggs.  
„Derek's got us competing for a brain shunt insertion. The egg is the skull. You can break the shell, But you can't break the membrane." Meredith explained and smiled "Damn it! I feel bad for him. He's kind of losing it."  
„I shouldn't be in charge of anybody." Cristina said  
„Just put one foot in front of the other. Just get through the day." Meredith smiled and Jackson threw away another egg.  
„Grey! You broke my concentration." Jackson said out loud.

Thirty minutes later Derek came back to check on Jackson's and Meredith's progress „Okay, 30 seconds. If neither one of you breaks the membrane, I'm going to have to judge you on precision, so make sure your initials are clean and clear."

„Stop talking! Five, four Three, two, one. Time." He count down and started to look at Meredith egg „Ah. What do you got? Oh, not bad". He handed the egg back to her and walked over to Jackson's table. „What about you, Dr. Avery?"  
„I just wish I had more time." Jackson said while handing over the egg to Derek „. Oh, really? You did your whole name?" Derek said.  
„What?! You conned me." Meredith exclaimed in shock.  
„I don't know what you're talking about." Jackson smiled victoriously.  
„He hustled me". Meredith said looking at Derek "He went through two dozen eggs And made me think I didn't have to practice."  
„Well, if you didn't practice, Meredith, You were overconfident. Dr. Avery, congratulations. You have the surgery."

* * *

There was an uncomfortable tension in the OR. Lexie, Mark, Addison and Teddy were preparing the OR and were about to start when Addison decided to inform Mark about the baby's condition. „Not everything you are doing is right, Addison! I know what I'm doing here. I'm a damn good surgeon if you want to know the truth." Mark started bickering after Addison had told him that the baby's vitals didn't look great.  
„I know that, Mark, but as it turns out you have a hard time prioritizing everything vital." Addison suggested.  
Lexie felt extremely uncomfortable. „Shut up, both of you, shut up!" She yelled „We are in the OR and you have a critical patient in front of you, so do your freaking job and help her and for a second ignore who slept with whom in this room.  
„Are you…? Mark, …" Addison looked at Mark in shock.  
„Oh my god you told her." Lexie looked at Mark.  
„Told me what?" Addison wondered and looked at Lexie. The look on the resident's face made her realize „Oh my god, you screwed little Grey. We are broken up for a day and you … don't tell me you jumped into bed with her."  
„You haven't told her?" Lexie asked Mark.  
„You broke up with me, Addison!" Mark said.  
Lexie was shocked and looked at Addison. She never intended to destroy their family. „Listen, I'll go, I'll leave this OR and the two of you are going to focus on saving her. It was meaningless sex. I was confused and he was confused. It didn't mean a thing."

„I can't believe you slept with her. She's an infant and she's Derek's sister in law." Addison yelled and everyone in the OR looked at her.  
„We were… are broken up, Addison. I was confused and vulnerable?" Mark tried to explain, but the words he used made Addison furious.  
„Confused and vulnerable? Is that what you are trying to tell yourself?" Addison dismissed his statement.  
„I just wanted to inform her that her husband is calling and asking how she is." One of the nurses interrupted.  
„Tell him to come as soon as possible because sometimes you have to tell the people you love that you love them." Mark said and couldn't take his eyes away from Addison. The neonatal surgeon added „Tell him that and that we'll have to consider delivering the child if she doesn't stabilize. Tell him that she's a fighter and that she'll pull through. Let's get started."  
„I'll start the incision now." Teddy said.

„I'm sorry you had to hear this, you probably think I'm nuts." Addison told Teddy Altman as both women were cleaning their hands after surgery.  
„Oh, you are talking to a person who just moved half way across the country to get a second chance with a guy she has been in love with forever only to find out that he hired me to appease his little resident girlfriend. I'm not passing judgement on anyone." Teddy laughed.  
„I love him, don't get me wrong, I really do. I love him, and we have a beautiful daughter together, but every time I look into his eyes I just feel like deep down he's in love with somebody else." Addison admitted. Even if there wasn't someone, there was something. Something that was hard to overcome.  
„Has he told you he's in love with somebody else?" Teddy wondered.  
„No" Addison answered.  
„Well, you still have the time to make him realize how much he's in love with you" Teddy smiled „It's never to late to make him realize that it's not too late"

* * *

„Overconfident my ass." Meredith mumbled.  
„Sloan is about to leave. And Mark is super pissed off because of it. He took Maria and stayed at the house." Lexie told Meredith who wasn't really paying attention at first, but wondered „Why would he stay at the house?"  
„He had nowhere to go and he knew we had the nursery. Addison was on call." Lexie said.  
„They seemed so perfect. It really is a small thing, don't you think so?" Meredith wondered.  
„He is perfect" Lexie nodded „really perfect. Way too perfect."  
„Don't tell me you have a crush on Sloan! He has a kid and he's happy being a dad. Before Addison arrived here he was an unbearable manwhore." Meredith looked at her.  
„So was Alex before he met Izzie and now we are dating and he's actually sort of sweet. … " Lexie smiled.  
„You know what? You can't be having feelings for Karev. He's like Meredith three years ago." Cristina cut in.  
„I said that – weeks ago." Meredith giggled.  
„I don't have feelings for Alex." Lexie insisted.  
„Yes, you do. Your heart's, like, in your vagina." Cristina replied.  
"I slept with Mark" Lexie stated and looked at Meredith.  
„Last night?" Meredith wondered. It would have explained why he had chosen to stay the night, but Lexie provided a different answer.  
"Two weeks ago."  
„Your heart really lives in your vagina." Cristina laughed as Lexie got up and left the room and screamed „Oh, my god. You are both monsters. Oh my God, is that Dr. Robbins?"  
„I thought she was in Africa. But wow, that's her." Meredith said as the three women observed a blonde woman in navy blue scrubs walking down the hall.  
"That's the reason Callie has been mad for a week you morons." Cristina suggested.  
„Do you think she came back because of Callie? That would be so romantic." Lexie wondered.  
„To waste an opportunity like that and let a wonderful scholarship go to waste. Yah!"Cristina nodded.

* * *

„I'm Anthony Scusoso. My wife has been admitted with burns three days ago. I took the first flight out."  
L: „I'll take you to her room, but you'll have to prepare yourself. What you are about to see is not easy."  
„Do you know her? She's such a sweetheart. She doesn't deserve this."  
„I talked to her when she was admitted. She was asking for you."  
„How's the baby?"  
„Dr. Montgomery is going to talk to you about the baby. She's your wife's OBGYN here. I'll page her and she'll come to see you once she's out of surgery. But as of now, the baby is fine."

* * *

The door of Callie's room opened. For a second she feared that Arizona was going to try to talk to her again. „I wanted to check on you, Callie. Lexie said you needed a few things. Can I come in?" George asked  
„Sure." Callie nodded.  
„Are you okay? I mean obviously you are not okay because you are on bed rest and almost lost your child." George stammered „What I meant to ask you was are you feeling better and do you need anything?"  
„The bleeding stopped. They just want to make sure I can carry her to term." Callie said.  
„That's good, I guess." George said and handed over a bag to Callie „I brought a few bits and pieces, Lexie let me use her key. I brought your gaming console and clothes."  
„Thanks. You remembered how much I like to play when I'm bored?" Callie asked.  
„I do. I don't regret anything we did or were, Callie." George smiled „I remember a lot of things. I remember your pet ferret."  
„You know, if I make it through this, maybe you can be uncle George." Callie smiled „Uncle George wouldn't be too bad."  
„Uncle George?" George wondered.  
„You don't want to?" Callie wondered after noticing George's hesitation.  
„Oh no, I do, I'm just surprised. I'd … I'd be delighted." George smiled.  
„You realize that you'll never be more than this, do you?" Callie wondered  
„I do Callie, and I want you to rest now because the past few days have been too stressful for you and our… your child." George emphasized the last two words before adding „I'll go and check on my patients."  
„Thank you, George. Thank you for looking out for me."

* * *

Jackson, Meredith and Derek stood in the OR. Jackson was about to start and Derek explained the whole procedure one last time. „The minute I hand you this drill, you're on your own. You may have hustled Dr. Grey, but you better not have hustled me." He looked at Meredith who looked away. "This is not a game. This is a real brain."  
„I got it. I'm ready." Jackson nodded.  
„Dr. Shepherd, Lexie grey is paging for a consult, repeatedly. She said she already paged Nelson and the other on call surgeon, but they are also busy." The nurse held up Derek's pager.  
„I'm in surgery. Dr. Grey, go." Derek commanded.  
„Well, are you sure? I wouldn't want to be overconfident." Meredith smiled and walked out of the OR.

„Where's Shepherd? I paged Shepherd." Lexie said when Meredith walked into the room.  
„You got me." Meredith said apologetically.  
„Are you her boss? 'cause there's something seriously wrong here." The woman next to the patient said.  
„I am." Meredith said.  
Lexie was nervous „Okay, um, she's- she's post-op day two from a tibial plateau fracture. She- she was fine all day, fine, and then ten minutes ago, She started complaining of headache, blurred vision And tingling on the left side of her body. I- I ordered a stat head CT. I cannot believe that you're the neuro consult."  
„Is she on blood thinners?" Meredith wondered. She knew it was something common for ortho patients.  
„Yes, for DVT prophylaxis." Lexie nodded.  
Meredith checked her pupils and looked at the CT Lexie had ordered. „She's got a brain bleed. Let's book an OR"  
„- H - how didn't I see this coming?" Lexie asked, but Meredith knew she did all she could „Did you check her platelets?"  
„Yes".  
„And everything was normal?" Meredith checked.  
„Until now, yes." Lexie confirmed. She had seldom experienced a patient deteriorating like this so quickly.  
„Okay, well, you checked her platelets, you got a CT., you called neuro. You did everything right. The only thing you're doing wrong Is standing around talking about it, wasting time, While we should be getting her to the OR." Lexie smiled.  
„You totally sounded like an attending." Lexie laughed  
„Right? Let's page Derek 9-1-1."

* * *

„Somebody wants to see you" Cristina said as she walked into Sloan's room. The girl was sitting up at her bed while Mark was sitting in a chair holding the baby.  
„So this is it." Mark bit his lip and looked at the infant for one last time as two men took over for him.  
„Hello, we are here to pick up our baby." One of them greeted him.  
„Goodbye, little guy. You are going to have a great life there. You'll be surrounded by people who love you and who believe in you and they all want the best for you. I hope you take great care of you!" Mark said as one last goodbye to his grandson. This was probably the last time he'd see him.  
„Oh, we will, we will." The other guy nodded.  
„Here's the diaper bag and this little teddy bear and he'll fall asleep if you sing 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' to him" Mark said and handed over all the items.  
„We are going to love him. He's gorgeous. And we are forever grateful. We know this can't be easy." The black haired guy explained and turned to Sloan „Do you want to see your baby before we leave?"  
„No, I'm fine and he's going to be fine not having me for his mother." Sloan said „I'll never be able to love him like he deserves it."  
„Goodbye little guy. I'm going to miss you." Mark said and kissed the baby's forehead.

„Do you think I'm a horrible person for giving him away?" Sloan looked at Cristina.  
„No, you did what you had to do. You don't love that child because you don't think you are cut out to be a mom. You don't get warm gooey feelings when you see a baby you don't smile when he's pooping his diapers." Cristina said.  
„Yeah and he thinks I'm a horrible person." Sloan said referring to Mark. She knew what he was really thinking.  
„You aren't. You made the choice that was best for your baby." Cristina smiled „Ultimately it's your decision"

* * *

One of the nurses held the phone in her hand and looked at Derek. Ever since Meredith had left the OR, Lexie had called every 5 minutes. "Dr. Shepherd, it's Dr. Grey again. Meredith Grey." The nurse said.  
Derek observed Jackson and explained the next steps. „Just passing the ventriculostomy tube now."  
„Almost there." Jackson nodded.  
„All right. Take your time, Dr. Avery." Derek sensed his nervosity, but as he explained "You want to make sure that—" Jackson screwed up. "Damn it. Damn it. Damn it." Derek cursed and asked Jackson to step back "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I- what did you do?"  
"Is there anything I can do or—" Jackson asked insecurely.  
„I don't know, Avery." Derek snapped „Is there anything you can do?

Meredith got more impatient by the second. The pressure inside her patient's head was rising and she needed relieve soon. „Where are you?" she asked Derek who was on the other side of the line.  
"Uh, we're having a problem." Derek explained „I'm fixing it now."  
„Okay, I've got a post-op ortho patient on DVT prophylaxis with a subdural hematoma. Derek, she's got a blown pupil. Nelson is in surgery and I can't get a hold of the on call neuro surgeon." Meredith said on the phone.  
„I'm not going to be there for a while, So you gotta take care of it yourself." Derek said.  
This wasn't the response Meredith had expected „What?" she asked surprised.  
„You wanted a solo surgery today. Now's your chance." Derek said „Don't screw up"  
Meredith took a deep breath and turned to the nurse who was standing beside her „Take point. I need loops and a headlight."  
„Here you go, doctor." She smiled.  
„Okay, scalpel." Meredith said as she stepped to the table.

* * *

Addison and Mark were observing their patient's reunion with her husband „He's so happy.  
I'm sure she wouldn't have thought he'd be the one visiting her in the hospital."  
„You want to start your life as a family and then all of sudden from one moment to the next everything changes. She won't be able to hold her baby in a very long time." Addison said quietly.  
„Not without excruciating pain." Mark nodded.  
„But it's the pain that makes you feel alive and that makes you appreciate the love we feel for one another." Addison said as she observed how the husband held their baby for the first time.  
„We can figure this out" Mark nodded  
„We can figure this out." Addison nodded. „Even if it's painful to get there."  
„Fresh start." Mark smiled.  
„We can do this" Addison nodded „see you at home"

* * *

Meredith and Lexie both looked at the open brain in front of them. „Did you just stop that bleeder?"  
„Uh-huh. I think I did." Meredith nodded.  
„How did you even know to do that?" Lexie wondered.  
„Sorry I'm late." Derek came in wearing his ferryboat scrub cap.  
„That's okay. Lexie made a good call. I've got it under control." Meredith smiled while Derek approached the table. „What do we got?"  
„Let me finish, Derek. I got this." Meredith smiled finishing the last steps.  
„Yes, you do." Derek nodded. „I'll pick up Christopher and drive home"

"Oh my God, that was amazing!" Lexie said in total admiration for what her sister had just done in the OR. As they washed their hands after surgery Lexie looked around to make sure they were on their own „I'm going to tell you something now Mer and I need you to promise me that you won't tell anybody and that you don't judge."  
"Did you kiss George again or sleep with Mark before you paged me?" Meredith joked.  
"Oh, no, god no, no. You know about Alex and me." Lexie said.  
"But?" Meredith looked at her.  
"I slept with Mark" Lexie admitted and Meredith couldn't help herself but laugh.  
"Yes. So what do you say?" Lexie wondered. Meredith looked at Lexie for a second and seriously wondered what her sister expected her to say. Mark Sloan was a manwhore and Alex was Meredith in her intern year. "I say, it's for you to decide" Meredith smiled „and your heart really lives in your vagina."  
"It doesn't." Lexie said offended „They are both decent guys and I don't want to ruin them. I just feel like I'm everyone's second choice."  
"Well, find someone who'd pick you over everyone else. Maybe you shouldn't be with either one." Meredith said cautiously.  
"Yeah I should really find somebody like that." Lexie said.  
"Dad asked why you haven't called him in 3 months." Meredith told her. Thatcher had called her two days ago and asked whether she knew what was wrong with her and she wasn't too sure.  
"My life is a mess." Lexie stated.  
"So what? He's your dad. He doesn't care." Meredith said. „Just call him"

* * *

The front door opened as Derek was preparing dinner at the house. Meredith walked in holding Christopher. Derek looked at her and smiled. He was grateful that he was waking up to this every single moment and eventually he had realized that he had something to make up for. Meredith did a fantastic job on so many levels. "You amaze me Meredith! Everyday I discover another thing I love about you. I'm proud of you and you were right, I was jealous the other day. I don't get to be in the OR as often as I want to." Derek admitted.  
Meredith didn't pay much attention to what Derek was telling her. All she had eyes for was her son whose hands looked like he had bathed them in tomato soup. "I'm proud of our son. He ate his meal on his own today, with his own two little hands. Look at those hands. The little tomatoes were his favorite and he ate like 5 or 6 of them. Lexie and I watched him during lunch. He ate his lunch on his own. He's so grown up."  
Derek looked at both of them and smiled, but wondered how the backseat of their car might look like if Christopher's hands were looking like that "He really is. Let's see how good you eat on your own now. I made enchiladas."  
„You are my favorite cook. So gifted." Meredith smiled.  
"And I didn't even need a skills lab." He teased her a little bit. At this point in time he knew that both of them had realized they had been wrong.  
„You knew this was going to happen." Meredith said referring to the outcome of her duel with Jackson.  
"I did. It happens when we are too confident. After last week I did." Derek nodded „You didn't have control over your feelings the whole week. You let your emotions come in the way of being a good surgeon. You were mad and …"  
"I was arrogant in there. I know." Meredith grumbled and added „Thanks Derek!"

„For doing what?" Derek wondered as he placed their food on plates and put them onto the kitchen counter.

Meredith smiled and answered „For showing me all those things I thought I never wanted to do. I never thought I could have or could do. I might be mad at you, but you enable me to do those things"  
"You did very well in the OR, not every resident would have handled an emergency craniotomy the way you did. I mean Avery screwed up with a shunt insertion. But you are a 3rd year resident and you have a lot to learn yet. You kept calm." Derek praised her.  
"I wasn't. You know, I don't even feel proud of myself." Meredith admitted „My mom was usually very cold. But the night she came home after winning her first Harper-Avery Award she hugged me and told me that she didn't win that award, she earned it. It was one of the few days were she actually seemed to be happy. She even apologized for not taking me and we had our own little ceremony in the kitchen. She told me she was proud of me that night because I was such a big girl. I think I was eight or nine. I don't think she ever told me she was proud on any other occasion."  
"She would have been very proud of you today. Any mother would be and regardless of that I'm proud of you and you can be very proud of yourself" Derek insisted  
Meredith looked at him. "No, because I was so scared in there and she was able to smell fear. Don't laugh I'm serious. It's so different if you are acting as lead surgeon."  
Derek kissed her neck and whispered "You did very well in there, Meredith. I couldn't have done it any better. You were flawless."  
In the mean time Meredith was observing Christopher's attempt to push his body up and walk "You know I'm going to cry if Christopher takes his first step in daycare. I mean it feels like he's going to take them any minute now."

 _So we may not always be winners. But we're not lazy. We take chances, we go for broke, swing for the fences... And sometimes, yeah. We strike out. But sometimes, you get a home run._

* * *

„Arizona, I told you I didn't want you in here!" Callie said after Arizona had entered her room for the second time that day.  
Arizona was unimpressed and started to say everything that had been on her mind ever since she had been back from Africa „No Callie, listen! I disappointed you! I left you to go to Africa! I left you and it was the biggest mistake of my life! You might refuse to talk to me Callie, but I love you! I love that you want to be a mom so badly that you went through IVF all by yourself. I love you, Callie and I can't stand not talking to you. You are the most wonderful person I know. Please think about us again! Please take me back!" she begged.  
„I don't want to be with you! Leave me alone!" Callie said „Leave the room"


	21. Chapter 21

Carolyn: The last chapter is going to be chapter 66, so there's a lot more to come and a lot more almost finished. I'm glad you still enjoy reading and I hope you enjoy what I wrote in this chapter.

Chrissy: Thank you for your kind words. I hope you enjoy the twists in this chapter.

Judy: Thank you for your review. This chapter might be a little bit heavier, but I hope you enjoy it.

Patsy: Yeah, the situation between Addison and Mark is still a little volatile. My working week wasn't any less stressful though. But it'll get better after next week, so I'm quite optimistic the updates are going to be more frequent.

Melanie: I'd be on a Patrick high too. Hope you enjoy this chapter

Ellen: He really is dreamy...

Susan: MerDer are in a good place, but I'm not too sure whether chapter 21 is going to be too much fun for any of the characters.

Jill: Thank you on your opinion on Addison and Lexie. We'll really see on where this is going. ㈴1

Kiley: You'll probably notice which pairing I'm leaning towards to. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

Stephanie: Thanks for your lovely review!

Shelley: Here you go!

* * *

Chapter 21

 _Communication, it's the first thing we really learn in life. Funny thing is once we grow up, learn our words and really start talking, the harder it gets to know what to say or how to ask what we really need._

"Why do I have to go there? I could just stay at home and watch a movie? Or we could stay here and do a lot of adventurous stuff in the shower." Meredith teased Derek in order to get out of the dinner they were about to drive to „We wouldn't need a baby sitter and I wouldn't have to spend the evening with my bosses. The only person who isn't my boss is Callie and she is ignoring Dr. Robbins ever since she's back in Seattle and officially told me that she can't look at me because of all the sickening happiness that surrounds me."  
"Meredith, Mark and Addison invited us. It's a nice dinner with a few colleagues." Derek insisted. „It's only going to be a few hours."  
"You are my bosses. All of you!" Meredith rambled "Well except Callie. But you should know that we don't really get along because of the George thing and the surgery thing. Things have always been super weird between us. I mean she told me that she wanted to get pregnant when I told her I was pregnant and we weren't even that close."  
"Meredith, it's going to be fine. You are Meredith in there, not Dr. Grey, plus you and Mark talk all the time when you meet at daycare." Derek smiled.  
"Daycare is different, we are talking about our day or our kids…" Meredith said.  
"Addison, me." Derek added with a nod.  
"but that's one boss I talk to, not five." Meredith answered defensively „he's practically family"  
"Well, I'm your boss. You are sleeping with your boss. You are sleeping with one of your bosses here. A dinner with other bosses shouldn't be too hard" Derek teased her.  
"And I'm going to stop if you keep forcing me to go to this sort of event." Meredith giggled. Derek knew that threatening to withhold sex wasn't credible because they both enjoyed it too much.  
"I promise I'm going to make things up to you" Derek kissed her neck and whispered into her ear. „And you are finally going to open the envelope with the details of Ellis adoption if we stay here"  
"Fine." Meredith mumbled. „We are going, but don't you think it's going to be weird to have Arizona and Callie in the same room. I mean according to what George and Alex told me the two haven't talked since Arizona came back from Africa except for the one time Callie was confined to a hospital bed. Callie has been avoiding to talk to Arizona at all cost."  
"She's been back for 8 weeks." Derek stated surprised.  
"So how are you going to make things up to me?" Meredith smiled and grabbed the car keys while Derek tried to get a hold of her body. "You could plan Christopher's birthday party. It's only a little over four weeks until he turns one and I want it to be better than any birthday I remember."  
"How did you celebrate your birthday?" Derek wondered.  
"Most of the time I got a grocery shop cupcake with a candle on top and a note from mom saying she's sorry she can't make it. That was when she actually remembered my birthday. I really don't have a clue how this birthday party thing works." Meredith smiled.  
"Fine, I'll take care of it." Derek kissed her „Let's get going. We don't want to be late."

* * *

Arizona was about to leave the hospital when she saw Callie standing at the nurse station. She knew that they were both invited to the dinner and was determined to fight for their relationship. „Callie, do you need a lift?"

„No, I'm going to walk it's only a few blocks and I want to check on my patient in peds. It won't be long until he is going to take his first few steps again." Callie answered with a fake smile and walked away.

„It's raining. Come on, we can ride in the same car together" Arizona offered and reminded Callie „We'll be in the same room for hours, ten minutes in the same car won't be too bad."

„Well, I rather not be in the same car with you." Callie said „In fact I'd give anything not to be in the same room as you tonight. Just stop trying to make things up to me, Arizona"

„I won't stop Callie. I can't stop. You are everything to me" Arizona said. She held on to her keys.

* * *

„See it as our last big get together before we go to L.A" Addison said and kissed Mark.  
He managed to get out an unenthusiastic „yeah." And turned to Derek who had just arrived "Can I get you a drink?"  
„No thanks, I'm on call tonight." Derek declined.  
„I'm going to have a glass of wine." Meredith smiled and greeted Arizona who had just entered the condo „Hey Dr. Robbins, nice to see you."  
„Yeah, it's been a while. I'm glad to be back." Arizona replied nervously.  
„What's for dinner?" Bailey who was sitting on the sofa in the living room.  
„We ordered something from this French place." Addison explained „they should be here any minute."

„Who are we missing?" Mark wondered after counting the guests and the seats after the cook had prepared the dinner in their underutalised kitchen.  
„Callie got held up. She's going to be late." Addison explained.  
„Maybe we should start. A dinner with 6 surgeons and only one of them is late. That's quite impressive."Mark smiled.

* * *

"28 year old female, 24 weeks pregnant, involved in a side collision, barely conscious." The paramedic shouted when the doors of the ambulance opened.  
Cristina looked at the black haired patient and froze in shock for a second „Oh my god, it's Callie." She uttered. When she had regained composure she looked at her resident and yelled „Number #3, page Montgomery, Altman, Robbins and Shepherd."  
Owen leaned over to the patient he knew very well „Torres, we have you covered. You are safe with us." He reassured her that they'd do their very best. „Steward, I want you to do a trauma panel and a head CT."  
„Callie, do you hear me. You don't give up now. We will do everything to save you, but you have to fight." Cristina said while pushing the gurney inside.

* * *

„So are you actually going to leave us? Webber said you can't stop talking about L.A." Bailey asked „I can't believe you are just leaving us behind."  
„We are. My friend from med school and her husband built this awesome practice. It's all about cooperative medicine, there's less rain and I can spend my evenings looking at the sea." Addison smiled „We bought this beautiful beach house."  
„Are we really so bad company?" Derek teased her.  
„I'm not going to answer that." Addison said and peeked at him  
„You really get used to it. If you stay long enough…" Bailey wanted to start her little speech on the beauty of the bay and Seattle's forests.  
„We already stayed way longer than I anticipated." Addison said „Richard's offer lured us into staying here and I forgot all about New York. But Washington State is too small for me and not sunny enough. I need the sun."  
„Yeah, the sun." Mark rolled his eyes.  
„How's Maria? She must be a little lady by now." Arizona tried to steer the conversation into a different direction.  
„She is, she tries so hard to get up at the minute, but she's too lazy and she won't be walking for a while. But when she smiles it feels like the whole world lights up and when she mumbles dada I feel like the I'm in love with the greatest person in the universe." Mark said and his eyes lit up.  
Bailey smiled and teased him „That child broke you, Sloan."  
Mark said „I just feel like I'd do anything for her." Addison nodded. „She really is amazing."  
There was a moment of silence that was interrupted by the sound of their pagers . „Party's over. We better get to the hospital."

* * *

„What's the matter?" Arizona asked when she, Bailey, Addison and Derek arrived in the trauma room they had been paged to. The look on Cristina's face scared her and what she was about to hear wouldn't be easy. The scans looked bad and the patient would be lucky to make it through this night alive.  
„It's Callie. She's been in an accident. Her scans are up there. She has a subdural hematoma so you have to get in there as fast as possible Dr. Shepherd. Dr. Hunt is already in the OR with Dr. Altman. Dr. Webber will join them as soon as he's out of the OR. Dr. Montgomery, we need you in there to monitor the fetal heart beat." Cristina explained when George walked into the room. „I heard they brought Callie in" he said nervously. „I need to be in there. She's having my child"  
„I want to be in there." Arizona insisted too.  
„Well, right now you can't be in there and you know that." Addison told both of them.  
„I'm going to take you to the gallery." Mark said and grabbed both of them.

* * *

Meanwhile Meredith was walking around the ER that was rather busy at this cold february night. She saw a guy walking in and figured that he needed help because he had a bruise at his temple „Hello Sir, can I help you?" she asked friendly.

„I I I… I was in an accident. There was this woman and all of a sudden someone pushed her in front of my car." He muttered „She got pushed. I couldn't stop. I hit her."

„Let's go to trauma 1 and let me check you out." Meredith said and led him to the room. He seemed confused.

„I'm fine, I don't need an exam. I just…" he got a little bit aggressive and pushed Meredith away „She looked pretty bad when the ambulance left. I needed… I needed to find out… I was listening to music and tried to change the station. I only looked down for …" he said „please tell me she's not dead."

„Sir, calm down and I'll make sure you are really fine." Meredith asked him insistant, but kindly „Where did your accident happen?"

„Two blocks away." The man explained.

„And you are saying there was a woman?" Meredith wondered while she started the exam. She checked his pupillary reflex which seemed fine and looked at him.

„Somebody pushed her, he ran away when I hit her. How is she?" he asked and turned his head hastily to follow Mer who was looking at the chart.

„She's hanging on." Meredith sighed. „And you are saying somebody pushed her? Why would anybody push her?"

„I don't know, but I saw someone." He said. „Where are you now?" he asked and couldn't see that Meredith was standing right next to him. Meredith knew that something was up and paged one of the interns. „You'll get a head CT now."

* * *

„What if she doesn't make it?" Arizona sat on her seat and observed Derek, Addison, Teddy and Owen in the OR. Mark  
„She's going to make it. She's going to make it." Mark repeated and held her hand in support.  
„What if they have to deliver the child? She wouldn't want the child to die." George asked losing his head with all the horrible thoughts that came rushing through his mind. „It's too early to deliver that child."  
„Well it's better than having both of them end up dead." Arizona said.  
„You can't endanger the child. She wanted to have that child." George insisted.  
Arizona got mad at him „You cheated on her, you almost destroyed her. You were the sperm donor. Sperm donor. Get it. You don't get a say!" Arizona yelled at George.  
Mark interrupted her before this would turn into a fight. In this situation Callie would need all the support she could get. „Relax, you two. Callie needs you right now. Both of you. I'll go to the ER now and see if they need help, don't kill each other here. Want me to call someone?"  
„No, it's fine." Arizona said.  
„I'm going to call her dad once she's out of surgery." George said. „He'd want to know"

After the surgery all the surgeons that had been involved with Callie throughout her surgery gathered in a room and discussed her case „We performed a temporary abdominal closure. If we had continued she would have bled to death"  
„So we'll just have to wait?" Cristina asked.  
„24 hours and we'll go in again if she makes it so far." Owen nodded  
„We have to figure out how to stop her contractions if they start again. I was hardly able to do it the first time. She's in SVT." Addison explained.  
„She has a whole in her heart, she needs a bypass to fix" Teddy Altman added.  
„The bypass would kill the baby." Addison reminded her. „Not fixing the heart would kill her" Teddy added.  
„And the blood thinners would increase the risk for a bleed" Bailey sighed.  
„So the only way to save the baby is to save Callie and the only way to save Callie might end up killing the baby" Addison sighed. „What a wonderful farewell dinner"

* * *

Derek walked up to Meredith after surgery. She had paged him after the driver of the car that had hit Callie had came back from the CT. „Right now Addison, George and Arizona are debating whether or not to deliver the child to ease the pressure on Callie's body."  
„But she's only at 24 weeks." Meredith bit her lip. „Cristina said it feels like the day I drowned. They are all waiting for news, barely able to function. But I need you to look at something. I think he needs surgery."

„It's the guy that hit her? Right?" Derek wondered.

* * *

While Meredith and Derek were looking at the scans, the driver was approaching Arizona and George. „I just…" he started, but the intern who had been told to observe his every move interrupted him"Mr. Lemming, Im not sure…"

Arizona looked at him. He had never introduced himself, but for some reason she knew who he was „Are you going to tell me how sorry you are? Are you? We don't know if she's going to make it and you want to tell me you are sorry."

„Mam" he said trying to say something. In this very second Meredith and Derek walked up.

„Don't Mam me, you drove into her. If she dies, you killed her." Arizona yelled. „She's the love of my life"

„Dr. Robbins, please, it's … it's… just come with me." Lexie who had been standing close by tried to pull her away.

„If our baby dies it's your fault, it's your fault." Arizona yelled.

„Dr. Robbins, please." Lexie begged her not to make a scene.

„She was pregnant?" Adam Lemming asked in shock.

„Yes, but let's go." Meredith took his arm. „You have to get admitted and you have to stay here for observation. You might need surgery."

„I tried to brake the second I saw her, but it was just too late." Adam told Meredith.

It had been a few hours since the accident and George and Callie were still trying to figure out what they were going to decide. „I say we give Callie the best shot she can get." George said after hours of considering each and every option.  
„And deliver that baby prematurely? Callie wants a kid" Arizona insisted. Their point of views had shifted completely within a matter of hours.  
„Callie wants to live." George said.  
„We all want her to live, but what is her life going to be like if she wakes up and her child is gone." Arizona wondered  
„What is her life going to be like when she wakes up and is dead?" George asked back.

* * *

Meredith sat down next to Cristina who was studying Callie's scans saying „Your wedding has been cursed."  
„My wedding? The wedding that was supposed to prove that screwed up people like us can do it?" Cristina laughed sarcastically.  
„Yeah. I mean. You didn't get married, Izzie is dead and Callie is here. There must be something wrong with life." Meredith said.  
„You are doing pretty good for yourself. There must be something wrong with you. There's no universe, there's no higher power, nothing has the control over our lives but we. Callie can do it, I know she can. She made it through the first surgery. Now we just have to"  
„Wait." Lexie said and sat down next to them  
"I examined the driver. The one that hit Callie." Meredith said. „He's under observation. How can she look like that when he's almost absolutely fine? But he said that someone pushed her."  
"Pushed her?" Lexie wondered.  
„Do you see that?" Cristina asked and pointed to the whole in Callie's heart.  
„What?" Meredith wondered.  
„I think I found a way to fix the heart percustanious. Burke used that technique." Cristina said and got up.

Arizona was sitting in the ICU by Callie's side. She held her hand and talked to Callie like she was able to hear her. „Callie, I know legally I'm nothing and I'm not even allowed to be in here and you haven't talked to me since I came back, but can you please live, live for me, live for us. Just live. Even if you never talk to me again, just live." After those words had been said the monitors started to go crazy and her blood pressure rose rapidly.

„What happened?" Addison asked when she came into the room.  
„Her pressure is bottoming out." Arizona said and went away from the bed.  
„Pulmonary edema" Teddy said „Let's get her into an OR."  
„She's bleeding out. Alert an OR that we are on our way down." Addison nodded.

„We've got blood." Owen said when they had opened the temporary closure again.  
„We have to go back in." Derek said.  
„Yang is right, we have to do the percutanious repair." Owen who had shut down Cristina's idea previously admitted. Both Cristina's and Teddy's head turned.  
"It's too risky." The cardio surgeon insisted.  
„Dr. Altman, step away." Richard Webber said „It's her only shot!"  
„You have one minute to get her heart back or I take her baby out!" Addison said.

Cristina tried her best, but one minute later she hadn't been quite finished. Addison made the cut and got out the baby. George and Arizona stood in the gallery and observed everything. "Intubate her, Alex" Arizona said over the intercom. „Do your best to save her"  
„Heartbeat is coming back." Webber said after five minutes.  
„Starting ventilation" Alex said and looked up to Arizona. „Continue compression."

* * *

„Callie's child is in the NICU and we don't know if they are going to survive the night and 24 hours ago I was complaining that she was going to be the only one at that dinner that wasn't my boss." Meredith said when she got changed into her normal clothes. Ever since Callie had been taken to the hospital she had been there too. Everyone who knew Callie had been there.  
„It's not your fault." Derek said.  
„I'm just sorry I said it. I shouldn't have said it. Are they going to make it?" Meredith wondered.  
„We'll just have to wait and see."  
„I have to pick up Christopher. He's been with the babysitter all night and I reached my 80 hour limit."  
„You were working all night?" Derek wondered.  
„Yes, I couldn't just sit around and wait for news so I covered for someone in the ER." Meredith said.  
„Drive safely, I'll be back at 6." Derek kissed her and handed over his keys.  
„Want me to cook dinner?" she asked, but he said „Oh, god no."

Meredith sat on the couch when Derek walked in. "He's so adorable." She told him while observing what Christopher was doing.  
"Yeah, and he's growing up so fast." Derek nodded. "Want to start making another one?"  
"No no no, Derek, I don't want to go through another pregnancy before I finish my residency. You have no imagination on how exhausting it is to be pregnant and a surgical resident at the same time." Meredith dismissed Derek's suggestion.  
"We could hire a nanny." Derek suggested.  
"I'd still have to go through pregnancy again and I'm not fully set on thinking about that." Meredith said.  
"I want a little version of you." Derek kissed her.  
"Well, you could start researching cloning. I have an IUD for a reason. We talked about this and if I "look at Callie's daughter in the NICU I have absolutely no desire to bring another child into this screwed up world." Meredith giggled and Derek sat down next to her.  
"It's not all screwed up. We are happy. We have a wonderful house and a wonderful son and wonderful jobs. Could it get any better?"  
"Well, it was you who suggested bringing another child into the mix when the first one hasn't even stopped to need diapers yet."  
"It's all going by so fast. It feels like you blink one second and your whole life passed you by." Derek said.  
"One second you are happy and the next you are flying through a windshield." Meredith nodded „You know I really hope they are going to be fine."

* * *

„Big day today! Came to pick you up for your special appointment." Meredith said and looked at the boy who hated carousels just as much as she did.  
"Yeah. You look tired. Is Dr. Torres not going to be here?" the boy wondered. She had promised him to be there just two days ago and he was unaware of what had happened to her.  
„No, Luke, she's not … available… right now." Meredith said. „Are you ready for a test run? Well a test walk and you should hold on to that handle because after six months your muscles are going to be weak. Your leg looks fine. Dr. Benson is going to walk you through your rehabilitation program."

Meredith wheeled the boy into the rehabilitation room where Dr. Benson was waiting for them „If you want to try, you can take Dr. Grey's hand and she's going to help you to get started." He said.  
„Ready?" Meredith asked the boy and offered a hand.  
"Sure. So what am I supposed to do?" the boy wondered.  
„Dr. Grey is going to be right behind you at every minute. What I want you to do right now is to grab these two handles and try to balance yourself. Don't try too much too fast. Right now it's about getting up and teaching your leg how to walk again. There's been severe damage to your tissue and muscle, so the brain needs to learn how to do those things again." Dr. Benson explained.  
„You can do this. Just one hand and the other." Meredith said with a smile.  
The boy tried but had visible pain. „That was wonderful. Pull yourself up now." Dr. Benson tried to encourage him.  
"It hurts." The boy said  
„Your leg looked fine, it's because the muscle needs to learn how to function. Pull through." Meredith said.  
Dr. Benson look at the boy and wondered. „Do you have a firm stand?"  
"Yes." The boy said while holding on to the two handles to his left and right.  
„Well, let's try how well you move forward." Meredith smiled and observed how the little boy took his first step.  
"I did it." He smiled and looked at her.  
„You did it." Meredith nodded „You…"  
Luke invited her „...finally stepped off the carousel."  
„Yes, you took your first step." Meredith nodded.

* * *

Lexie was in the ICU looking through the window into Callie's room. She was still in critical condition, but Arizona hadn't left her side. „I wonder if anybody would sit by my side like Arizona does." Lexie said when Mark was standing next to her.  
„How is she?" Mark wondered.  
„Still no change. Arizona hasn't left her side in four days."  
„I see." Mark nodded „And Grey would be there and your dad and Derek. And I would be there."  
„You?" Lexie asked surprised.  
„I like you and you are something like my brother's sister in law." Mark nodded.  
„Yeah." Lexie said. „It would just be nice to know that there's somebody out there that cared about me the way Arizona cares about Callie. Don't get me wrong, I like Alex, but it's not like I'm his… his one"  
„There is." Mark said not audible for Lexie and told her "I have to go. Addison and I are having dinner at the bella vita tonight and I don't want to be late. It's our goodbye to Seattle."

* * *

„Oh, I didn't expect you'd still be here." Meredith said surprised when she saw George and Arizona in the NICU.  
„How is Callie?" George looked up from the incubator that was keeping his daughter warm.  
„Still no change. What about the baby?"  
„Holding strong and gaining weight. She was born at 24 weeks, so it's a long shot." George said. „But I'm monitoring her when I'm not working."  
„You should go home, both of you, you've been here for ten days. You should get some sleep." Meredith insisted.  
„I can't, this baby needs at least one parent by her side." George yawned.  
„Right now she has two parents by her side" Meredith said with a smile on her face.  
„You realize that he was the sperm donor? Nothing more." Arizona asked her.  
„Now is not the time to discuss this. I'd offer to stay here and look after her, but I have to get home." Meredith said.  
„I can stay with her until tomorrow. You two go to home." Cristina offered.  
„Are you sure?" George wondered. „Yeah. Callie was my bridesmaid. I like her and what the two of you need is sleep." Cristina said „You need to rest."

* * *

Lexie and Alex were lying in bed when Lexie finally found the courage to say what had been on her mind „Alex, what am I to you? I'm the rebound, ain't I? Sex, but no feelings. You wouldn't sit by my side like Arizona is at Callie's"  
Alex was taken by surprise. „Lexie, you are amazing. With everything I've been through…"  
„Do you love me?" Lexie wondered.  
„Lexie. I'm not somebody who shouts out I love you all the time." Alex said.  
„That's all I needed to hear. Listen Alex, you are a good guy, but you and I are never going to work out in the long run. I don't think this thing between us is heading in a healthy direction, Alex. You shouldn't waste your time on something that isn't going to work out. Callie, it all can be over in a second. I don't think we should maintain our current status. I want more than sex." Lexie rambled and started to get dressed "Best of luck with the African kids. I hope your project is a success. I really do." Both of them were alone again.

* * *

Cristina was sitting in the NICU and holding the small hand of Callie's baby „You have to survive, little girl. Your mom still has to see you and there are tons of people waiting to meet you. They are rooting for you! Right now you are really small, but if you fight, you'll be just fine. I fixed your heart with another doctor, she's really good, I fixed your mom's heart. That's what I do, I fix people's hearts."  
While she said this her eyes teared up. She was fixing people's hearts. „It's an amazing feeling and I'm sure you will feel it one day too, the thrill of holding a human heart in your hand. I'll never forget the first time I did. It had the biggest impact on my life anything ever did and you will hold one too. Being a surgeon is in your blood, your DNA. I'm sure you'll be one too when you are all grown up. The hospital is a lot nicer if you are not hooked on to machines. But right now the machines are helping you to survive. Once you are strong enough you won't need them and we'll take them off ne my one."  
„Whose heart did you hold?" Owen who had observed her for a while wondered.  
„Does it matter?" Cristina wondered.  
„It sounded like it did."  
„My dad's. I was 9, we were in a car accident. He was bleeding and I tried to fix it, his chest was open from the impact of the accident and I got in there with my hand and pumped the blood through his body. That's all. I couldn't save him. When the paramedics came I had blood all over my body"  
„There was nothing you could have done. You were 9 years old." Owen said „But you decided to become a doctor, to save people who were luckier than your dad because they were brought to the hospital you work at and you are determined to save them. He's the reason you are an amazing cardio surgeon. Are you going to stay the night?"  
„Yes, I promised George and Dr. Robbins" Cristina nodded.  
"I guess I have to go home alone. Good night then" he kissed her.  
„You can stay here. You can just stay here."

* * *

 _At the end of the day, there are some things you just can't help but talk about. Some things we just don't want to hear and some things we say because we can't be silent anymore. Some things are more than what you say. They're what you do. Some things you say because they're no other choices. Some things you keep to yourself and not too often but every now and then, some things simply speak for themselves._

* * *

Meredith opened the envelope and read.

„Margrete Grey.  
Place of birth: Boston, MA  
Date of birth: 10-21-1983

No contact details"


	22. Chapter 22

This week my update is coming a little earlier. Hope you are happy about it! This chapter is fairly ligh and was a lot of fun to write. I hope you do enjoy reading!

Patsy: Thank you for the review! Callie is going to get some spotlight in the intermediate future where I'll explore the effects of the accident on Callie.

Carolyn: I hope you are going to enjoy this chapter too.

Susan: I hope you'll enjoy this chapter. It's so much lighter than the last one. We'll see about Mark and the siblings ;)

Shelley: Thank you for the review!

Stephanie: Hope you keep enjoying the story.

Jill: Getting a little bit off the cliff with this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

Kiley: Thanks for the feedback! This chapter is going to shed some light on whether Christopher is going to have a sibling.

Melanie: Hope you are enjoying this update.

Dora: More on Maggie to come, but it's going to be different than on the show and not on home turf :P

Judy: April's crush has cooled off a little bit and at the minute she's focusing on being a good doctor. You'll see her questioning some parts of her life soon though.

* * *

Chapter 22

 _A good basketball game can have us on the edge of our seats. Games are all about the glory, the pain and the play by play. And then there are the more solitary games. The games we play all by ourselves. The social games, the mind games, we use them to make life more interesting. To distract us from what's really going on. There are those of us who love to play games, any game and there are those of us that like to play a little too much._

* * *

Meredith looked at the envelope in front of her. Nothing she had found out last night made sense to her and looking at the name for the thousandth time helped her to realize that Ellis really did give birth to another daughter when Meredith was five years old. Yet this realisation brought up more questions than it answered. „l don't get it. Mom always seemed so put together and now, it looks like she's totally screwed up. I mean what kind of woman abducts her child, moves to the other side of the country and sends him a video of that child only to tell him that he will never speak to me while she gives up another child for adoption only to separate it from her father, the man she was absolutely in love with. She was so determined pand driven rofessionally. Why didn't she fight more? She could have had a life with Richard instead she tried to kill herself. Doesn't make sense."

„Meredith, Don't you think that she would have been dead if she had really wanted to die." Derek asked her.

„What do you mean?" Meredith looked puzzled.

„You and Dr. Wyatt talked about this. It was a cry for help – she wanted attention." Derek explained.

„But Richard never found out and when she found out she was pregnant with his daughter she took me and we went to Boston" Meredith rambled.  
„How do you know it's a girl?" Cristina who had just caught up with them wondered, but Cristina didn't move too far away and decided to continue to eavesdrop on the conversation.  
„Go away Christina. I'll tell you later." Meredith told her and continued to rant „That woman is not my mother. Not the mother I knew. She …"  
Derek interrupted her and suggested „She kept things from you to protect you. We would do the same. Or would you tell him if you drag him half way across the country leaving me?"  
„I would never do that. I would never leave you." Meredith said and looked at Derek.  
„Meredith, we never know that. We don't know what's going to happen." Derek said softly.  
„We would try harder." Meredith insisted and looked into his eyes. Her parents had given up, but she knew that Derek and her were worth fighting for.  
„I'm sure your dad thought so too." Derek suggested and kissed her temple.  
„I don't know Derek. I'm surprised the girl never tried to find out more." Meredith admitted „I kind of would like to meet her. How is your super secret research thingy going?"  
„She's happy with her life. She probably know all she wants to know" Derek used as an explanation.

„Or dead." Cristina mumbled while Derek continued to talk to Meredith about his research project. „Good. But I miss being in an OR. And the supply closets and on call rooms."  
„Well you are back in the OR tomorrow." Meredith smiled as she knew they'd be in a tumor resection together  
„That's right. But only for three days." Derek sighed and kissed her before he went away.

Derek was reading the ‚Journal of neurosurgery' on the couch when Meredith walked into the living room. „He tried to walk" he greeted her.  
„Don't tell me I missed it." Meredith asked with some disappointment in her voice. This was a moment she had looked forward to ever since the day she had found out she was pregnant.  
„No, he was waiting for his mother." Derek smiled „but he practiced."  
„Good boy." Meredith kissed Christopher's forehead and told him. „Mommy would have been very sad if you didn't. Sorry I'm late, I checked on Callie's girl before I left."  
Derek asked „How's the kid? She looked so tiny and fragile."  
„She's a premie. You never know. But for now she was holding strong. Dr. Robbins has been in there with her before I left." Meredith sighed.  
„Good." Derek nodded, but he couldn't conceal his worry.  
„There's something you are not telling me." Meredith noted.  
„Well, we tried to take Callie of sedation but she didn't respond to anything." Derek explained. „There's brain activity and the CT looks good, but"  
„You don't know if she's going to wake up?" Meredith bit her lips. „Callie might never wake up"  
„Right now, I can't tell." Derek nodded.  
While the two adults discussed Callie's condition their son had pulled himself up and was standing up near the living room table.  
„Oh, Christopher, wait till I get the camcorder." Meredith shouted when she turned her head and saw that Christopher was beginning to move his left foot"  
„He's not going to wait." Derek laughed as he observed his firstborn.  
„Be a good boy, come to mommy." Meredith got down on her knees and opened her arms to catch Christopher in case he would fall "You just started to walk. You just got up and took the first step."  
„Sometimes you just have to take the first step." Derek nodded.

* * *

The trees were still bare, but everyone around them were signs that the seasons were changing. Mark had taken the long way to the house Meredith and Derek lived in because he knew he'd get a chance to talk to Lexie. Ever since the day his lips had touched hers she would never leave his mind. It was her sweet innocence and optimism that made it so easy to talk to her. While they were listening to old songs on the radio Mark confided to Lexie „I don't want to go, it's Addison who wants us to leave Seattle. If it was up to me, we'd stay were we are even though L.A. is a chance to progress my career. Am I a bad person if I think it's selfish that she…"  
„Why are you asking me and why do you keep bringing this up? Do you want me to beg you to stay?" Lexie wondered thinking to herself that she should be the last person he should discuss his relationship to Addison or his feelings about anything with. Ever since her lips had touch his lips she couldn't look at him.  
„It's not because we…" Mark started, but omitted „had sex." He took a deep breath and started to explain again. „Well, you are here, Derek and Mer ditched our play date and Maria or Christopher are not going to give me any answer. I said I'd go with her before Sloan arrived. But Sloan changed things."  
Lexie was reminded that she had really wanted to kill Meredith and Derek just 40 minutes ago. They had planned to take Christopher and Maria on a boat trip, but Meredith and Derek had been paged to the hospital before they had a chance to get on the boat and now Mark and Lexie were left with the two kids who slept peacefully in their car seats. „She went away. And for the record I don't think it's selfish. Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself."  
„Well, things change if there's a kid involved. I can't leave her." Mark said and checked on Maria in the rear mirror „I could never leave Maria. When she was born something in me changed and I knew that I need to protect her for the rest of my life, that I have to do what my parents couldn't."  
„You are a great dad. You always look out for her." Lexie complimented him even though it felt uncomfortable.  
„She's my first priority." Mark said.  
„So you choose to go to L.A. because it's better for her." Lexie said and looked at the road ahead of them. It'd be a long afternoon.

* * *

The reception area of the surgical unit was cramped. Alex was trying to organize the incoming patients who had just arrived from the airport. Most of them looked tired and it would be important to assign them to their rooms as quickly as possible.  
„I can't believe you organized all of this" Meredith congratulated Alex. He had spent most of his free time in the hospital to get all of this put together.  
„Neither can I." Alex smiled.  
„And you made all those awesome surgeries possible. If you weren't you and I wasn't me, I'd kiss you. Not on the mouth though because god knows where that has been." Cristina said.  
„Shut up, Yang." Alex told Cristina and realized that this was the closest he would ever get to a compliment from her.  
„I can interpret for you. I learn Swahili when I was in Africa for the summer." April offered and took over two charts from Alex's pile.  
„I'll page the attending and get the rooms ready." George said.  
„Shepherd, Montgomery, Altman and Sloan are still in surgery." Jackson looked at the OR board.  
„The kids look tired, they probably need sleep anyway now and so have I. Lexie is probably going to kill me if I don't return to the house soon." Meredith laughed.  
„I need you to check on your spina bifida case first." Alex handed over a chart to Meredith „I mean Shepherd is in surgery and you haven't asked any other neurosurgeon if he wants to do it pro bono"  
"Fine, I'll look at her." Meredith smiled. „Good luck with the rest."

Meredith heard a baby crying before she entered the patient's room. According to the file the girl was 10 months old and had a minor case of spina bifida. It was a rare condition. It would be the first time she would witness the procedure on a child that had already been born. Addison had performed the procedure on a baby that was still in its mother's belly. She walked into the room with a smile and found a baby and someone from the orphanage she was living in „Hello, I'm Dr. Grey, I'm here to have a look at Zola." She greeted the woman that was holding the little girl with the big brown eyes.  
„Go ahead." The woman said and put Zola into her little bed. The girl was still crying.  
Meredith tried her best to distract the girl so she would stop to cry, but it proved harder than she was used to. Christopher was an easily to please baby „Hello Zola, follow the light, can you do that for me? Can you? Yeah, little girl, that's fine."  
„She has been crying ever since she arrived at the orphanage." The woman explained.  
Meredith took Zola on her arm and started to talk „Dr. Shepherd is going to look at her later, he's going to perform the surgery. There's a built up of spinal fluid which causes pressure and that's why she's crying. If you move her a little, you'll see that… ah.. .yeah… you stopped crying." Both adults looked at Zola. Meredith had moved her a little bit in her arm.  
„She stopped crying." The woman said surprised.  
„Well, that's because of the position I just put her in. My son sleeps instantaneously if I put him into this position." Meredith smiled. „and in her case it eases the pressure that is caused by the build up of fluid."  
„No, it's you. It's definitely you. She likes you." The woman said and observed the spark in Zola's and Meredith eyes.  
„Well, she's a cute little girl." Meredith said, but remembered that Christopher and Lexie were waiting for her „Dr. Shepherd is going to be here soon."

* * *

Lexie had stayed over the night to help Meredith with the preparations for Christopher's birthday party. While Derek had promised to take care of the preparations they both knew that he would be stuck in the OR because of the sheer amount of pro bono surgeries he would perform within the next three days so Meredith was helpful for all the help she could get. Lexie knew what people did for their children's birthday parties and it was nice to have someone who knew how to make breakfast at the house when Derek wasn't home. They both said at the kitchen counter in their pyjamas and ate pancakes.  
„Sloan doesn't want to leave Seattle." Lexie said. „Thanks for leaving me with him by the way"  
„Yes, That's the impression I got from what Derek told me, too, but according to him he wanted to try. Why are you telling me this?" Meredith wondered. „Why did he tell you?"  
„He told me. He took Christopher and me home when you skipped our boat trip to steal all those amazing surgeries and leave none to me. I was the one that helped Alex with the visa you know. We talk. He tells me thing like this. Like we are friends. I mean we are not, he's my boss. He's not my friend."  
„What else did he tell you?" Meredith tried to find the reason her sister was rambling.  
„What do you mean?" Lexie asked.  
„You two talk, like a lot. And you have sex in on call rooms" Meredith smiled.  
„We had sex in on call rooms once" Lexie corrected her „how do you know?  
"It's your face." Meredith smiled.  
"What do you mean?" Lexie asked confused.  
„You have that look on your face if you are trying to hide something, it's my look, it's how I look when I'm trying very hard not to talk about something." Meredith explained. „So what is he like?"  
"Steamy" Lexie giggled.  
"So what are you? Just that given the frequency of your heart to heart conversations one might think that the two of you are friends." Meredith suggested.  
„… friends… yeah… .uhm…" Lexie stuttered. „I don't know"  
„So are you going to help me to put up the garlands? Derek bought all of those and now he's stuck at the hospital with all those sick African children and I'm here picking up the cake, decorating the room, cleaning up the house when I'd rather be at the hospital doing something useful." Meredith smiled.  
„You are preparing the house for Christopher's first birthday party, I think there's nothing more useful you could do." Lexie smiled back. „And I'd love to help you because Christopher is my favorite nephew."  
„You are probably right, I'm just having an Ellis Grey moment. I wish I had one of those in the OR". Meredith smiled and took the last pancake.  
„You have those in the OR. Your solo surgeries were amazing and when you fixed this brain bleed four weeks ago – that was amazing." Lexie reminded her.  
„I have a moment." Meredith stated and stood still.  
„Another Ellis Grey moment?" Lexie wondered.  
„No, a Meredith Grey moment. We have to pack up all of this." Meredith said and put all the garlands, balloons and other party equiment back into the bags and boxes they had been delivered in.  
„Why?" Lexie wondered.  
„Christopher and Maria are going to celebrate their birthday at the hospital." Meredith said and grabbed to boxes.  
„That's crazy." Lexie said and tried to find her morning coat.  
„Well, most of their parents are in the OR at the minute and we have way too much cake anyway. Call Thatcher and tell him of our change of plans." Meredith said.

* * *

„You are crazy. A birthday party in the hospital cafeteria." George shook his head. „It's craziness"  
„My mom would have liked it. Well she wouldn't have liked a birthday party because she thought that if you wanted to celebrate something it should be something you achieved and the bare fact that you got pushed out of your mom's vagina didn't really count as an achievement, but anyway. She would have liked that I chose the hospital" Meredith summarized what she thought she knew about her mother, even though she wasn't so sure anymore.  
„You really are going crazy." George suggested after Meredith pulled out another tablecloth out of one of the boxes.  
„She isn't and just help me with that garland now." Lexie insisted.  
„Wow, I thought you were preparing for the spina bifida surgery but apparently I'm wrong." Alex told Meredith as he approached the table after his third surgery of the day.  
„I did, I did prepare. We are going to place the shunt tomorrow." Meredith said. „Derek has other cases to deal with right now."  
„I'm going to see how the other kids are doing, page me, if there's cake." Alex said and got back up.  
"I'm going to check on… my daughter… I really wish Callie would wake up… she doesn't have a name and she might die." George said.

Derek looked surprised. The cafeteria was decorated with all the decoration he had ordered for Christopher's birthday. "What are you doing here?" he asked Meredith who had approached him the second she saw him in his scrubs.  
„I thought you son deserved to be around his dad on his first birthday and as you can't seem to get out of the hospital I decided to bring the party to the hospital. Addison and Mark know about it too. We are going to cut the cake once Maria is here." Meredith said.  
„Best wife ever." Derek smiled.  
„So, if you can stay away from the OR for another 30 minutes you actually manage to get a piece of cake." Meredith giggled.  
„Like I said, best wife ever." Derek repeated and kissed her.  
„And Lizzie and Kathleen called. Told me to say hey and that they are going to send over some boxed gifts." Meredith said.  
„You talked to my sisters? You haven't talked to them since Thanksgiving." Derek said surprised.  
„Christmas" Meredith corrected him „We talked at Christmas, Derek. You were in the OR, but I talked to them. They even invited us to come over some time during the summer, but I told you about that. But yeah, I know, I feel like I'm in some sort of parallel universe, you know with the husband and the kid and the sisters in law and I can't believe our son is turning one today."  
„Yeah, time flies." Derek smiled.  
„You were right. Makes you want to have another one. Well, in the future… after residency… definitely after residency…" Meredith smiled. "Have you met Zola?"  
„Yeah, read your notes in the files, examined her, looked at the scan. She's adorable. Her smile. The woman from the orphanage said I was the second person in whose arms she stopped crying."  
„I was the first." Meredith smiled.

The party was almost in full swing when Mark and Maria arrived. „Have I told you that you are crazy Grey?" Mark asked after he sat down next to Meredith with a piece of birthday cake.  
„Runs in the family." Meredith smirked.  
Addison who had just gotten out of surgery carried Maria to the table Meredith and Lexie had set up. „Look at that Maria, Dr. Grey decorated our usual lunch table for your birthday and all these people are here for you."  
„Here Derek, take your son." Meredith said and handed over Christopher to Derek.  
„How are you, Christopher? Is my little birthday boy excited to open all his presents?" Derek asked his son who didn't answer, but the smile on his face was all the answer he needed.  
„I'm sure you went overboard – again." Mark laughed.  
„Not as much as you did" Addison smiled.

* * *

One day later Meredith and Derek were in the OR together. „Are you sure you want me in on that? I wouldn't want to be overconfident?" Meredith joked before they started to prepare for the spina bifida surgery.  
„You were over confident and no I don't think you'll be over confident in there today." Derek said.  
„Are you?" Meredith teased him.  
„Well, yesterday you took care of that birthday party and you moved it from our house to the hospital just to make sure everyone could be there." Derek said „it was sweet and thoughtful."  
„I did. We are parents and we are going to fix that little girls spine now." Meredith said. „Well you are"

"Meredith, this is Zola. Here, can you hold her for a minute?" Derek said and handed over the baby to Meredith.  
Meredith looked more surprised "I know, I examined her when she came in and I operated on her with you, Derek, sure I can hold her."  
"Come here. There. Okay." Derek said and began his first post op exam. „Zola, can you smile for me? Yeah." Derek looked at Meredith „See? Her facial movements are intact. Okay, look. Over here. See that? Watch how she's tracking me." He asked and walked around the bed. „Over here. Neuro exam is good, even after the shunt. Great."  
"It's amazing. This feeling when you hold a baby for the first time. Do you remember the moment when you looked into Christopher's eyes?" Meredith smiled.  
"I do. It's like looking into your face and my face at the same time and you feel like nothing in the world could …" Derek said and Meredith added. "… be evil or hurtful or dark. Like there's only happiness ahead."  
"We should adopt her. Let's adopt her." Derek said.  
"You are crazy. We have a child. I'm a resident and you are the head of the department. We don't have time." Meredith tried to shut him down.  
"We'll make time. You said you wanted more. I want more. More of this, more of us. Zola needs parents and she likes us. Just look at her. We only started a family and Zola needs one." Derek said „We can do this!"  
"Do you have any idea how long it takes to go through an international adoption process?" Meredith wondered.  
"We'll make it work." Derek assured her.  
"You are serious about this?" Meredith looked at Derek.  
"Look at her. Just hold her. Look into those eyes." Derek insisted.  
"Yeah, look into those eyes."Meredith nodded. „She's adorable."

* * *

 _Life is not a spectator sport. Win, lose or draw, the game is in progress whether we want it to be or not. So go ahead, argue with the refs, change the rules, cheat a little, take a break and tent to your wounds but play, play, play hard. Play fast; Play loose and free. Play as if there is no tomorrow. Ok, so its not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Right?_

* * *

Arizona sat by Callie's bed side like she had been every day for the past week „If only you could hear me, and I'd be able to tell you what you meant to me. I love you Callie. I love you and if there's one thing I want to be, it's for us to be happy. I want to marry you, I want to raise your beautiful daughter with you who is in the NICU at the minute and fighting, she's a fighter just like her mommy and she's beautiful. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And if you want to do the same, open your eyes and tell me. You have to…"  
She heard a voice saying „Yes." It seemed like a dream because she hadn't hurt that voice for a week.  
„What?" Callie asked and looked at Callie in shock. She had woken up. She had responded to something she had heard. The short moment of shock turned to pure happiness and relief.  
„Yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with you."Callie repeated and coughed because her throat was dry.  
Arizona got up and said „Oh my god. I thought I had lost you forever. I couldn't have lived with myself if that good bye at the airport would have been the last time we talked."


	23. Chapter 23

**So...no new Grey's episode this week, but I'm going to update anyway. As I'm rather busy and visiting my mom this weekend, I wanted to update before friday.**

 **Thanks to Charlotte, Carolyn, Susan, Jill, Kiley, Cindy Lou, Dora, Popcornkitten1, Judy, Patsy and Melanie for reviewing!**

 **I really appreciate your feedback. There's some progress within the next chapter even though there's a lot of focus on what happened to Callie and how she copes with the accident, you will find out something about the adoptions. I hope you keep reading.**

* * *

 **Chapter 23**

 _As babies, we were easy. One cry meant you were hungry, another you were tired. It's only as adults that we become difficult. We start to hide our feelings, put up walls. It gets to the point when we never really know how anyone thinks or feels. Without meaning to, we become masters of disguise._

Callie batted her eyelids. The room was bright. She looked around and smiled. She had been running, but Arizona had stayed. Callie had realized that she wanted to be with Arizona while she had walked through the park – just before a car had hit her. „How long was I out for?" she asked quietly and looked at Arizona.  
„Two weeks. Do you know what happened?" Arizona replied and looked at Callie.  
„No" Callie shook her hand and looked at Arizona. The blonde surgeon didn't know a lot of details. The police hadn't talked to her. All she knew was that the driver had shown up at the hospital the day it happened and had returned every day since and left a boquet of flowers at the front desk every time.  
„You were in an accident. You almost died, but you fought and you have a daughter and she is beautiful and she's a fighter." Arizona said realizing that Callie probably didn't even have a clue that the girl had been delivered prematurely. She bit her lip and tried to explain „They had to get her to save you, but she's holding strong. You were brought here and taken for surgery. Dr. Montgomery did everything she could, but we had to deliver your daughter in order to save you . But she's holding strong. Oh my god, I'm so happy you woke up. You woke up and …" Callie tried to get up, but Arizona knew the wounds on her abdomen were too severe to be mobilized yet. „No, don't move, I'll page Shepherd and Hunt." Arizona insisted and ran out the room.

A few hours after she had woken up two police officers who were investigating the incident came into Callie's room. So far the whole case had been mysterious. What the driver told them and the surveillance footage they had retrieved from a nearby café suggested that this hadn't been an accident. „What can you tell us about the incident Dr. Torres?" the young officer asked.

„I walked then I didn't and a car hit me." Callie said. The whole incident seemed a little blurry. There was a void and Callie could not quite grasp which parts she really remembered.

„Can you be a little bit more specific?" the officer asked.

„What do you want me to say? It was night, I was on my way to a dinner party at a friend's apartment. I was walking through the park because I wanted to get my head clear. I needed time to think. It was a cold night, classic Seattle. When I reached the road I walked on the side walk and then I tripped and a car hit me." Callie said bitterly. Somehow she must have lost balance.

„You tripped?" the officer asked. He didn't know whether Callie was trying to change the story or if this was what she truly remembered

„I did." Callie said unsure.

„This might be hard to hear, but we have a surveillance video from the café on the other side of the road that shows that you've been pushed." he explained.

Callie's expression changed. He sensed that she really did not remember the incident. „I don't remember being pushed." Callie insisted „I remember tripping and getting hit by the car, the seconds before it hit me felt like eternity but I was unable to move."

„Do you know who the person was?" the police officer tried to find out.

„I haven't seen anyone, I don't remember being pushed." Callie said in shock „You are saying I was pushed. You are the one saying something did this to me on purpose."

The officer nodded looking at Callie's bruised face „The evidence leads us to think that…"

Arizona walked into the room. She had just been in the OR for six hours and she wanted to see her fiancée „Who let you in here? What did you do?

„Dr. Bailey called us." The older police officer explained and showed her the fax."

„They said I was pushed." Callie said. Everyone in the room remained silent.

„The driver didn't lie to save his ass?" Arizona asked and looked at the two officers.

„I'm afraid he didn't, we have a video that confirms his statement." the younger officer said.

„Have you found the person who did this to her?" Arizona tried to find out. „I mean you have a video, there has to be a way."

„No, the quality of the material isn't good enough to identify anybody. May I ask who you are?" the officer replied.

„Arizona Robbins, I'm her" Arizona said, but Callie interrupted her and added „fiancée."

„I'll have to ask you to wait outside Ms. Robbins, we want to question Ms Torres" the officer said „Do you have a minute once we are finished here?"

„I don't remember anything, Arizona." Callie looked at Arizona. She had lost every memory or at least she wasn't able to remember anything. At least she had woken up without any speech impediment Arizona thought. Considering that she had came in with a brain bleed she had been lucky. „I don't remember anybody walking close to me. I remember something on my back and losing my balance. I know that I had just decided to give us another shot. I was walking through the park and I looked at the bare trees and somehow I just knew. Arizona is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I saw an oak tree. I remember looking into the lights and they grew bigger and I got hit. I haven't seen anyone. It might as well just have been another accident."

Arizona knew that Callie tried to cope. It must have been hard to find out that this indeed had not been an accident, but she had been attacked, assaulted. Somebody had wanted to kill her „They'll find who did this to you."

„I was looking through those bridal magazines. I think we should get married in the park." Callie changed the topic „I like oak trees"

Arizona looked at her. One minute they had been talking about the attack, Arizona refused to call it accident, and the next Callie mentioned their wedding, the happiest day of their lifes. „You got assaulted in that park, we are not getting married in a park."

„I wasn't." Callie insisted.

„Calliope, they have a video tape. Somebody followed you and somebody pushed you. I didn't recognize who it was." Arizona said „I don't know who did this to know. But we are not talking about the wedding right now. You have to get better first and Sofia has to get better first."

Callie started to cry. Arizona looked at her, instinctively she knew that something she had said caused Callie's sudden outburst of emotion „What's the matter?"

Callie felt her stomach. It was a little flatter than it had been before the accident. Arizona realized that she had mentioned Sofia, that's what Callie had called her. „She's been ripped from my body and I haven't seen her. She might die and I haven't seen her." Callie cried.

It was true, Callie had not seen Sofia yet, so she tried to reassure her „She's not going to die. You are going to hold her. You'll be fine. Both of you"

„I almost died, one minute I was fine and the next minute somebody pushed me on the road and I was hit by a car and I don't remember it. I don't know why anybody would do something like this to me. I was fine and the next minute I was fighting for my life. All I wan't to do is to hold her, but I can't hold her because I can't hold anything." Callie cried. Her motor skills had been worse than before the accident. She needed to learn how to move her fingers and arms again. She needed to learn how to move her feet. All the neurons in her brain needed to form new paths in order to learn what she had forgotten how to do. Derek had been optimistic after the exam, but Arizona knew it was frustrating and the rehabilitation process would be difficult.

„You will be able to hold things again, we'll call the physical therapist and…" she tried to reassure Callie who cried. „I want to hold her now. I want to feel her skin on mine and for a second I don't want to feel like my whole world crashed and all I have is you."

„She would have died if we didn't." Arizona stuttered. „And you have friends and they are all going to be there for you."

„I can't believe someone did this to me." Callie said „Why would anybody do this to me? I'm not a bad person"

„You'll get to hold her soon." Arizona sat down on the bed. „We'll just have to wait until Bailey clears you to see her"

* * *

Meredith and Derek were standing in their kitchen. It was early in the morning and it had been a day since Callie had woken up. „I love this. You, me, Christopher and a stack of pancakes." Derek kissed her and tried to flip the pancakes in the pan. Zola was still at the hospital recovering from her surgery.  
„What happened to the health nut?" Meredith laughed. When they had first moved in together he had eaten muesli and had mocked her for her breakfast habits. According to him grilled cheese sandwiches that were leftovers from the night before were not acceptable breakfast food.  
„He moved in with you. Derek laughed and his deep blue eyes looked at her. His eyes were full of love. Full of love for her and full of love for their son and their life „It's kind of hard living healthy in a house where you do the grocery shopping every second week."  
„What is this supposed to mean?" Meredith looked at him  
„It means that you… eat a lot of… unhealthy stuff." Derek hesitated. He couldn't stop looking at her. Her hair was still messy and Christopher tried to grab a few strands of her hair.  
„Whatever. Eat your whole grain vegan pancakes." Meredith mumbled and poured a little bit more marple syrup over hear breakfast „Are you sure we should do this? Adopting a child? I've been thinking about it ever since I found out about Ellis and Richard and I always wondered whether the adoptive parents could love that child more than Ellis loved me or whether that child was the reason she couldn't love me."  
Derek looked at her and nodded, he knew Meredith needed reassurance „Ellis loved you and I'm sure the child's parents loved that child and I'm sure that child grew up to be happy and I think Zola can grow up to be happy with us. I know Zola is going to be happy with us. I love you and I love Christopher and I know I'm going to love Zola just the same. I'm sure of it and you are going to love Zola."  
„I have to get into the shower now." Meredith said and got up from the dinner table.

* * *

Arizona was standing in front of the nurses' desk and looked at different charts. „How is Callie? I saw the police came in to question her yesterday?" George walked up to her.

„She was pushed. This hasn't been an accident." Arizona said. „Someone did this to her and she couldn't remember and now… she's feeling confused because she doesn't know why anybody would do this to her and I attacked the driver when she came in… Oh my god, the driver didn't lie." She paused. „He was trying and he couldn't do anything."

„You were shaken up. Do they know who assaulted her?" George asked.

„They don't have a lead according to the officer. They are going through a bunch of patient files right now to figure out whether she … this couldn't have been a patient, could it?" Arizona asked „I mean, who would do this to anyone?"

„She's a good doctor." George said. „Does she need a psyche consult? I mean, she just found out that the accident she has been wasn't an accident."

Arizona nodded „We should probably get a psyche consult…"

* * *

A week later Dr. Bailey still hadn't cleared Callie for surgery. „Here we are again." Bailey said when she and Meredith walked into the room.

„How are you, Callie?" Meredith asked with a smile even though she could see that Callie was struggling. She knew that all Callie wanted was the permission to finally see Sofia, but the wound that closed her abdomen wasn't healing well.

„I don't care how I am. I haven't seen her. She could die in that bed in the NICU and I wouldn't have seen her at all. Instead of letting me see her they are calling psyche on me every freaking day. Like I couldn't deal with my shit by myself. She would have lived her entire life without ever seeing her mommy. I haven't seen her but I love her so much and I wanna hold her." Callie said and tears were running down her chin.  
Dr. Bailey smiled „Callie, I understand you, but you can't. You'll have to wait until we get you mobilized. Hear me, you cannot leave this bed or this room. Dr. Grey is going to check on your wounds tonight and we can access the situation again. But right now I can't allow you to leave this room"  
„Come on, Bailey. Please." Callie begged.  
Dr. Bailey sighed. „I'm really sorry. You can't move because it's too dangerous yet, and Sofia can't leave the NICU because that'd be too dangerous too."

„Sofia is well looked after, Callie. Arizona and George are all over her. She's not alone." Meredith tried to calm her down, but the stream of tears in Callie's face did not come to a hault. „Everything seems so unreal. You wake up hooked on to all those machines and they tell you that someone did this to you. One minute I was half way through my pregnancy and the next minute I'm not. You are all happy with McDreamy and the perfect little family. I'm sorry I said your happiness is nauseating, but you have everything and all I want to do is hold my baby."

There is was, the truth. Meredith was happy and Callie was barely hanging on. „I'll see what I can do Callie. I'll figure out a way to get you to see her." Meredith leaned over to Callie and whispered.

„Meredith, you don't have to do this." Callie looked at Meredith and understood what Meredith had meant.

„I want to do this Callie. You need to see her before you can get all whole and healed. You miss her, you might not have seen her yet, but you miss her. You feel empty and like a piece of you is missing. I understand that." Meredith said „We'll figure something out"

* * *

 _Boston 1983_

 _„_ _Misses Grey." The social worker opened the file and looked at the woman on the other side of her desk._ _  
„It's Dr. Grey" Ellis corrected her._ _  
„Alright, Dr. Grey, I'm here to talk about the adoption with you." The social worker explained._ _  
„I'm aware, it's a formality. I cannot raise this child. I don't have anyone." Ellis said. She knew she had Meredith, but a five year old girl couldn't look after a baby._ _  
„There are institutions that provide help for single parents. I could set up an appointment with someone there to get assistance for you." The social worker said „if that's the issue. There are ways"_ _  
„I don't need assistance, I don't want to hold that child, I want to forget this last year ever happened." Ellis said and looked away. She felt shame and self hatred. Richard had chosen Adele and she was alone, but this was something she didn't want to get into during this conversation. It was better if nobody found out about their daughter._ _  
„I see you have another daughter." The social worker said and looked at the file._ _  
„I have and Meredith is …it's different. She understands. She's strong. I know I can deal with one child." Ellis defended her decision._ _  
„And you don't know if you can deal with two." The social worker drew a wrong conclusion._ _  
All of a sudden Ellis tore up. She didn't know this woman and the woman never knew her, but she felt the urge to share the story with someone._ _„I could, but I don't want to. The baby's father was the love of my life. I don't know if I'll ever love another man the way I loved him. I doubt it. He was a co worker and he is married like I was. It was an affair, an affair, but we loved each other. I can't keep this baby.  
„Do you want to name this baby?" the social worker asked. __  
„Let the adoptive parents do it. But write my last name into the birth certificate._ _I don't want to see her, I just want to move on with my life and forget about this awful chapter and move forward with my career. I can't take care of another baby. I would hate her, I know I would. I don't want that for her." Ellis said._ _  
„Do you hate Meredith?" the social worker asked. You took her to live with you. What about her father?_ _  
„Meredith has nothing to do with this." Ellis got mad „_ _Now give me the papers! Let me sign the papers and I'm out of here."_ _  
„You realize that by signing these you give away all legal rights to your daughter. Now and in the future." The social worker reminded her._ _  
„Give me the papers!" Ellis reached over her desk and grabbed the papers out of the social worker's hand. Nobody would find out about this._

* * *

Zola's recovery was quick. Like a lot of children she quickly recovered from a procedure that would have taken adults months or years to recover from. If they were to adopt Zola Christopher would have to learn how to get along with her. He had played with other children at daycare, but bringing another child into their home would be a change. He'd lose all his only child priviledges and have to share his toys and his parents' attention. The first play date would be a good opportunity to find out whether they got on.  
„Come on Christopher, you are going to meet your baby sister today." Meredith smiled and took Christopher's hand. It wouldn't be a long from the hospital daycare to the pediatric ward so Meredith thought he should walk.  
„You are going to like that girl." Derek smiled.  
„Do you want to introduce him to his sister or set them up for a date?" Meredith joked and held onto Christopher's hand.  
„Let's see how it goes." Derek chuckled.  
When they arrived at the room Meredith got down on her knees. She knew that Christopher did what he wanted anyway, but she hoped he was listening this time. „Young man, I want you on your best behavior. No biting, no spitting, be nice."

Meredith's reminder had been unnecessary. For all Meredith could tell Christopher and Zola were getting on great. „Looks like they are getting along" she smiled and watched as Zola was trying to roll closer to Christopher who was playing with a ball.  
„Yeah, looks like it." Derek smiled and kissed her temple.  
„They are going to get along great."Meredith nodded. „We'll be fine"  
„You sound optimistic." Derek noticed.  
„I know and it's weird." Meredith nodded.  
„Bright and shiny?" Derek mocked her.  
„Bright and shiny!" Meredith nodded, but as she looked into Derek's face she noticed a few signs of sadness. His eyes showed it. „You look sad. Is it because Mark is leaving?"  
„I don't want to talk about this with you." Derek said „Yeah."  
„Do talk to me, I'm your wife. You are my husband." Meredith encouraged him „You can tell me."  
„It is because Mark is leaving with Addison." Derek admitted.  
„You are jealous because your…" Meredith was surprised.  
„Stop. Before you continue this has nothing to do with you and me. It feels like Mark is leaving me." Derek admitted.  
„Well, you have a family, you are a grown man. You can visit him, take a weekend off, fly to L.A., take Christopher. Mark is not dead, he might not be around, but he's one phone call away and your friendship is not going away." Meredith said. Derek was looking at the kids and began to smile again. „Look at them."  
Meredith looked surprised and wondered why he was smiling. „Our son is stealing Zola's toys."  
„I used to do that to Amy." Derek nodded.

* * *

Lexie was carrying a few bags of blood when she ran into someone she had not expected to be there „What are you doing here Dr. Sloan?" she asked like she had just caught him in her bed. She had no clue why his presence was making her feel insecure and uncomfortable. They had had sex weeks ago, but this wasn't something she had been thinking about lately.

„I needed to take care of a few things. And Grey, never settle for second best." Mark said and their eyes met. Lexie Grey had beautiful eyes he thought. Her eyes didn't look anything like Meredith's though. „It's not worth it. Karev might have organized this wonderful African project, but."  
Lexie kept starring at him, but interrupted him „What is this supposed to mean?" Lexie wondered „Are you trying to lecture me on how to live?"  
„Some final words of wisdom before I leave for the golden state, Grey." Mark said and looked at his phone for a second „O'Malley is not the one for you. Karev definitely isn't the one for you. He doesn't appreciate you the way he is supposed to. He isn't over Stevens yet, if you ask me. He's like a lost puppy and compensating his loss with sex."  
„You knew I was talking about him?" Lexie wondered referring to a conversation they had had before.  
„It was really obvious." Mark smirked „And Karev seriously? You are better than that."  
L: „Why am I the second choice for everybody? The second choice behind Izzie Stevens? A dead girl."  
M: „Because there's someone out there and you are his first choice. He doesn't know it yet, but he's out there."  
„Dr. Sloan, thank you and I hope you have a good time in L.A., but poetic doesn't suit you"

* * *

"I made an appointment with the adoption agency and the social worker that is going to access our case." Derek smiled when he sat down in the cafeteria next to her. Meredith looked a little shocked. She knew the process included an in depth assessment of their lives. It all happened a lot quicker than she had expected.  
"What are we supposed to tell the social worker? That we got married in Vegas? That my mother has given up a child for adoption?" Meredith wondered. „I can't talk about my childhood or about Ellis or the Alzheimer"  
"We are going to tell her that we love this little girl and that she got settled in here fine and that you and me love her." Derek kissed her neck. „We love her. That's all that matters."  
"Yeah, sometimes love isn't enough. We work crazy hours and they don't want to put the child into a family that lets her starve, I mean we got married in Vegas. We'd want to show her that we can be responsible parents." Meredith insisted. A wedding after a drunk night wouldn't look great in the file, but after all it could have been love at first sight.  
"We have a one year old son to account for that." Derek reminded her. „You are a good mother, Meredith."  
"What happens when you get another job offer, if we move. Zola would have to move to." Meredith stammered.  
"I'm sure that there are going to be schools and daycares and babysitters wherever we are going." Derek laughed „Or are you planning on moving to Antartica?"  
"Derek. What if social services think that I'm not fit to be a mother?" Meredith asked. „My mom, she wasn't…"  
"Meredith, you are going to show her how great you are. You do everything for the people you love. You are compassionate and you take great care of your patients. You know what they need. " Derek said „You don't have to worry. They are going to love you. They are going to love you just as much as I do – well maybe not as much as I do."

* * *

She knew what her patients needed, Derek had said so himself and while he was performing his last surgery before driving to the airport to say farewell to Mark and Addison she was waiting for her friends in the resident locker room. When Alex walked in she looked at all of them and closed the door. „Fine guys, I need your help. It's for Callie" Meredith said. The other residents were packing up there stuff after a long shift or just changing into their scrubs to start theirs, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk to all of them. „It need you to listen to me"  
„What's the matter?" George wondered. He had been in surgery all day and wasn't aware that Callie had told Meredith just how badly she wanted to see her daughter.  
„Are you seriously asking me?" Meredith wondered. „She's in that bed for weeks, she's in that bed and she hasn't seen or touched her daughter. You get to see Sofia, you talk to Callie about Sofia. Christ, Kepner even told her how Sofia was the cutest premie she's ever seen. What do you think Callie feels when she hears that?" Meredith said and paused. All of her friends looked down on the floor. „I have an idea and I need your help."  
„I'm in." Jackson nodded  
„So am I." April smiled.  
„Fine. " Alex rolled his eyes. He knew that Izzie and Callie had never been friends and that therefore his relationship with Callie wasn't the best, but he wanted her to overcome the consequences of this accident.

„Alright Callie, I don't want you to tell Bailey or Webber or whomever anything if we get caught. You are going to see your daughter tonight and you won't even have to leave that bed." Meredith said „we thought of a plan." Callie's eyes lid up. She'd finally see her daughter. She knew it would be hard because being born at 24 weeks meant that she would be hooked onto all kind of tubes, but she couldn't wait to see her. Arizona and George had told her said she was beautiful. She wanted to find out just how beautiful even though she was afraid at the same time. Sofia wasn't meant to be here yet, she was meant to stay in her belly for another 14 weeks. She might not make it after all.  
„Thank you Grey, thank you. Thanks guys." Callie smiled while April and George were connecting her to mobile monitors the had borrowed from the trauma department.

Despite their best efforts it hadn't been easy to sneak Callie through the hospital. Lexie had used all her charm to distract Dr. Webber who would have noticed the empty room in the ICU otherwise. Alex had done his best, but Addison who had thrown a going away party wasn't as easily distracted as he had hoped. He had finally told her that Mark was looking for her. In the time she had been walking to the empty skills lab they had pushed Callie's bed through the NICU. Callie was lying in her bed and Meredith had placed Sofia on her breast as she wasn't able to hold her yet. After a few seconds Sofia's monitors went off. Callie looked uncomfortable and like she was in discomfort too. Jackson grabbed the infant and put her back into the incubator and started CPR. The fetal heart rate had increased and everyone around knew that this wasn't a good sign. The monitor had gone off.  
„Christ, what's happening there?" George asked and looked at Jackson who was doing his best. Callie had grabbed George's hand at first, but now the grip was getting more loose.  
„What is happening? What?" Callie looked at all of them.  
„I'm trying to normalize her heartbeat but I have to be careful. She's so tiny" Jackson said. Callie heard Jackson's words, but he seemed to move further away, she was getting dizzy.  
"Fuck, help, I need help" Alex yelled "Someone check on her"  
"What do you think.." April checked Callie's pulse „Pulse and heart rate is fine"  
"Go, get away" Meredith ordered the rest of the group to run. „We have it covered" Who ever had heard the alarm would be there any second even though Sofia's normal alarm had stopped as her vitals had returned to normal. She must have been excited to see her mommy Meredith thought to herself.

"What do you think you are doing here, Dr. Grey, Dr. Avery?" Dr. Bailey looked at both of them in shock. The other residents had left before she'd see them. It was only Jackson who had been assigned to keep a watch on the patients in the NICU anyway and her. "Jackson was here because he's on peds. He had absolutely…" she tried to explain. She had promised them that she'd take the blame and she was going to stand by this promise.  
"Shut up Grey. What do you think you are doing here? I told you this morning that Torres wasn't allowed to move" her former mentor yelled at her. Both Jackson and Meredith looked to the ground.  
"She wanted to see Sofia" Meredith said, but she sensed that this wasn't the right argument to appease Dr. Bailey.  
"I don't care, Grey. This girl was in absolutely no condition to be wheeled across the hospital. Who was in on this?" Dr. Bailey asked „Seeing that nobody caught you before you got here, you must have had help. Dr. Avery certainly helped you. "  
"Me, just me" Meredith insisted.  
"Don't kid me, Grey. You couldn't possibly have brought her bed here on your own." Bailey tried to press an answer out of her, but Meredith remained firm. "I did"  
"Fine, if that's what you want. Grey, you go and wait in front of the Chief's office." Dr. Bailey said „You wanna play hard ball, let's do it. Avery, get Torres into the CT, I have to check if there's any bleeding"

* * *

 _It's not always easy to speak your mind. Sometimes you need to be forced to do it. Sometimes it's better to just keep things to yourself though. Play dumb. Even when your whole body is aching to come clean. So you shut your mouth. Keep the secret. And find other ways to make yourself happy._

* * *

A small group of doctors was gathered at SeTac Airport. Addison and Mark had postponed their departure until Callie had woken up, but now she was fine and there was nothing holding back the inevitable. Mark was leaving Seattle with Addison and their daughter. Both Mark and Derek were thinking about the day Mark had picked up Derek from the airport before Derek had started to work at Seattle Grace. It had been a long road, but they had came to a fork. Derek would stay in Seattle with his wife and Mark would leave with his family. He wanted to stay, but at the same time he didn't want to not be around his daughter. „So this is goodbye" Addison interrupted Mark's and Derek's thoughts.  
„It is. Call when you arrive. It was great meeting you." Miranda Bailey said and hugged Addison.  
„Bailey, keep a good eye on Tucker and I know you'll keep everyone in line." Addison nodded.  
"Bye. Look out for your family. I'll see you around." Derek hugged Mark. „You can always come back and live in the trailer if things get sore."  
„I thought I'd at least get the guest room" Mark joked „Bye. See you. We have to go. Everything will work out fine. I'll call you when we get there.".  
„Bye Derek." Addison said and turned around and carried Maria on her arm. The young girl didn't look anything like Mark. Derek recognized the eyes and the hair. He had seen childhood pictures of Addison and that girl was the spitting image of her mother.


	24. Chapter 24

_Sorry you had to wait for this chapter a bit, I had some heavy news to digest last weekend and didn't feel like doing anything until wednesday._

 _Anyway, I hope you are all going to enjoy the next few chapters even though they are going to be rather bumpy for a lot of characters. Most of them are going to have to fight for their personal happiness and some are going to question the direction they are headed._

 _Patsy, Melanie, Lynette, Susan, Sara, Carolyn, Ellen, Judy: Thank you for your reviews! I hope you keep enjoy reading the story!_

* * *

 **Chapter 24**

 _"The body is an infinitely complex mass of interacting systems. People like to think doctors see it all clearly. But it's not always obvious what's a hiccup in the system and what's full-on medical disaster. We figure that out in our first year of residency. We spend the rest of our careers lying about it."_

Meredith sat in Richard Webbers office. It was the second time in the past 24 hours and this time it felt a lot like being called to the principal's office. He was nervously walking up and down his office while Meredith watched him. The room was silent and all Meredith was able to hear was the sound the clock hand made and Richard's shoes scuffling over the floor. Meredith knew that he was angry and he looked like he was fighting an inner battle. She wondered when he would start to yell. She had acted against Bailey's orders. When he finally found the right words he looked at Meredith and asked with a firm voice. "I talked to Dr. Bailey, Callie and a few of your friends. Meredith, what were you thinking? Bailey said she told you not to move Callie that morning"  
"She wanted to see her baby. Callie was sad because she hadn't seen Sofia. You know psychology plays a positive role in the recovery of a patient." Meredith justified her behaviour and wanted to know whether she had to confess everything to Derek straight away „Did you talk to Derek about this?"  
"Can Derek tell me something about this incident?" Richard wondered.

„No" Meredith said. She knew that he would be even angrier about this than Richard was. This was the wrong point in time. The adoption was not finalized and they would meet the social worker to begin the home study today, but if she interpreted his face correctly he hadn't talked to Derek.

„You endangered not only the baby, but also a woman who has been in a coma for several weeks." Richard continued. He had told her that this sort of behaviour was not acceptable in his hospital when she had brought a patient from peds to the OR gallery, but at the same time he wasn't surprised. Ellis had always been pushing the rules and Meredith was Ellis' daughter.  
"Two. And she has been stable ever since she woke up." Meredith said. „She needed to see her daughter. Callie asked me for help. Just look at her, she's psychologically unstable."  
"Don't argue with me, Meredith. It wasn't the first time you wheeled a patient who was unfit to move around the hospital. You promised you wouldn't ever do this again after you brought that boy to the OR gallery." Richard said. He remembered the day Ellis had proposed that they'd leave together, she had used the same determination to persuade him.

„Well, I'm not the only one who went back on a promise they made here, am I not?" Meredith snapped and they both knew what she was referring to. Richard looked into her eyes for a second and quickly looked away.  
He took a deep breath. "Given the circumstances and given that you don't want to tell me who helped you I have no other option but to put you on probation until the board has decided how to proceed further." Richard sighed „This is serious, Meredith. If something had happened to Sofia, Dr. Torres could have sued you and the hospital. They could have taken your medical licence. You are going to stay out of the OR until further notice. You can be lucky that Torres or the baby are fine. I really thought I taught you better."  
Richard walked over to his chair and sat down while Meredith got up from her seat "Is that all? Can I go now? I have to pick up my son and meet Derek. We are meeting the social worker in an hour."

* * *

After picking up Christopher from daycare and driving through rush hour traffic Meredith finally arrived at the social service office that would access their case. It was a small office in mid town Seattle. When she walked in Meredith saw Derek looking at his clock. She was runnign late due to the meeting in Richard's office. „Sorry, I'm late. Got held up at the hospital. We have to talk." Meredith kissed Derek and lifted Christopher onto the chair next to Derek.  
"Meredith, where were you?" Derek asked „I thought you knew this was important! The appointment starts in five minute. We have to get in there."  
"Derek, it's important I know. I need to ask you something" Meredith said. She knew she needed to tell Derek about what had happened with Callie and she knew that she had to paint a brighter picture „It's really important." She took a deep breath and looked at Derek. He looked surprised and didn't quite have a clue where this was going. „Would you love me if I wasn't a surgeon? I could stay at home and watch the kids."  
They both knew that the chance to adopt Zola was bigger if one of them was actually around, but they had never discussed the impact the adoption would have on their careers. Derek had never considered the possibility that Meredith would want to reduce her workload. He knew that Meredith didn't want to be like her mother, but this was not the point and place to discuss this. „Meredith, what is this about? We are late already and you hold us up because you are feeling a little insecure again. Stop worrying." Derek got up from his seat and picked up Christopher „Everything is going to be fine. Don't blow your little problems out of proportion. It's going to be fine. I'm sure the social worker won't mind that both of us are working. Everything is going to be fine, but we have to go in."

The interview went better than expected. The social worker, a woman called Janet was sympathetic towards them. Meredith had almost calmed down completely when they reached the section of the interview that was asking for details on their employment. "So what do you do?" Janet asked and looked at Meredith and smiled.  
Meredith replicated that smile and started to explain „Derek is working as a neurosurgeon and I'm …" Damn, she thought, why was he interrupting her. She had wanted to come clean, but he kept talking „We are surgeon. My wife is doing her residency and I'm head of the neurosurgery department."  
„Yeah, we are." Meredith tried to interrupt Derek. "But we have a one year old son and we make time for him. I could make time for Zola too."  
„We could" Derek nodded.  
„Fine" Janet put her pen down. "I'm going to consult your employer about your employment details, but I'd say everything should be fine. Or is there something you want to tell me before we finish here?" Yes, Meredith thought. Now would be the perfect opportunity to come clean to Derek, but if she waited for the board's decision it might not be as bad as it sounded now.

* * *

Cristina and Meredith sat in the living room. Usually Cristina wouldn't make the way out into the woods, but this morning she had shown up at their door. Meredith and Derek had heard the door beel and Meredith had gotten up, she had opened the door and Cristina had walked in saying „You look like shit". Meredith was still wearing her pyjama and sat down next to Cristina who was sitting on Meredith's side of the bed now.  
„I was up all night. Christopher didn't sleep. He's teething or running a fever and I sat up all night with him. Why are you here?" Meredith said. She knew it was a strange occasion for Cristina to show up at her door.  
„They met for dinner at a restaurant!" Cristina blarred out. Meredith was still a little sleepy and unsure who Cristina was talking about. „Who?"  
„Owen and Teddy." Cristina said. She sounded like everybody on this planet should know who she was talking about „Who do you think I'm talking about?"  
„They talk like all the time" Meredith said „They are friends. There's nothing to worry about"  
„I feel like the third wheel in my own relationship." Cristina complained. Derek who had just walked into the bed room again rolled his eyes and sighed „Such an unfamiliar feeling, is it?"  
Neither Meredith nor Cristina paid a lot of attention to what he was saying. Meredith looked at Cristina „So they met for dinner. Just dinner?"  
„Yeah, just dinner." Cristina said.  
„I'm going to take my pants off now, if you don't want to see it, you better get out." Derek said and started to pull down his boxer shorts very slowly. Cristina hurried to get out of the bed room and Meredith looked at Derek as he pulled down his boxers before she left.  
„Bye, Derek, we'll be in the living room, if you need us." She smiled  
„My own house" he shook his head and told her „No… am just going to change Christopher and Zola and get them ready for…" As he looked up he noticed that Meredith had already left the room „you're not listening…"

„The board is going to decide next week and I haven't told Derek" Meredith said. She knew that Cristina knew everything she was worrying about.  
„You are going to get fired? Why would you get fired?" Cristina wondered. Surprisingly Cristina hadn't heard about the incident, but it was possible she had not been at the hospital the day before.  
„I brought Callie to the NICU, well Alex, April, Jackson, George and I did but I got caught and I covered for them." Meredith explained.  
„Why didn't you ask me? I'm your person" Cristina said.  
„You were in surgery. And I covered for all of them. Bailey caught me and told Webber and you know, there's not so much he can do. It's hospital protocol." Meredith bit her lip.  
„How long are you under probation?" Cristina wondered.  
„Indefinitely until the board decides what they are going to do." Meredith said „they are meeting next week."  
„They won't fired you, will they?" Cristina asked.  
„I don't know and I don't know how to tell Derek. I tried to tell him, but he cut me off" Meredith said and told Cristina everything about their interview with Janet while Derek left before breakfast for an early surgery.

* * *

A little later Cristina's car pulled up in the hospital parking lot. She went inside and went straight into the resident locker room while Meredith left Christopher at daycare. When Cristina walked into the room she saw that George, Alex and Lexie were talking to each other. „Why do you look like shit?" Cristina wondered. „She's missing sex." Alex teased Lexie „That's how you look like if you don't have sex"

„I'm not. I went to Joe's last night." Lexie told Cristina „Where's Mer? I have to talk to her."

„Mer is under probation because of you." Cristina told all of them.  
„They put her under probation?" George asked surprised. Apparently Webber had not told too many people about Meredith's punishment.  
„What? All… " Lexie mumbled, but Cristina interrupted her „Shut up and fix it."  
„They won't fire her for it. It'd be ridiculous." George insisted.  
„She's Ellis Grey's daughter. The Chief won't go near her." Jackson said. „He… I don't… he won't"  
„We should go and tell the Chief what…" April tried to persuade them to come clean.  
„No Kepner, Meredith insisted that she takes the fall for this." Alex said „Nothing is going to happen. She gets suspended for a week, we distract Shepherd so he doesn't pick her for surgeries and she will be back in the OR next week like nothing ever happened."  
„Well there's been a lot of bad press surrounding the hospital." Lexie mentioned a few articles in the recent past. A couple of attendings had been fired following malpractice lawsuits.  
George looked at Cristina and said „But Callie and Sofia are fine and all she did was fulfill a patient's wish. It's not like she abducted somebody."

Meredith walked in and looked at them. „Stop talking about me, don't go and tell Webber. You know I'm still here, I might not be allowed to be in the OR, but I can still do consults and once the board has decided, we can all go back to normal. Come on, we have rounds."

All the residents and Derek had entered one of the patients' rooms. Inside they found a shy young girl who seemed fine. She looked at Derek and her face turned red. „Sorry, I'm blushing" she apologized and looked down to avoid eye contact.  
„Oh, it's alright, half the patients have the hots for Dr. Shepherd" Alex winked at her „and 2/3 of the female residents in my year. You are not alone."  
Meredith's and April's head turned and both residents were looking at Alex. „Seriously?" Meredith asked.  
„Dr. Grey here is going to prep you for surgery." Derek said. He was unaware that Richard had banned her from the OR. Meredith looked surprised. April tried to cover up for her and suggested „Dr. Shepherd I was hoping that you would let me…"  
Derek looked at her irritated and thought it was odd that Meredith did not protest. „Dr. Kepner, I told Dr. Grey to prep the patient. She'll prep the patient if I tell her to and you will get assigned to another case. Am I clear?  
„Sure Dr. Shepherd" April nodded and stepped away from the bed. The residents looked at each other. Meredith wasn't allowed to be in the OR, they had to do something to ensure that she wouldn't have to tell Derek what had happened before she was ready to.

„Derek, let her do it if she wants to" Meredith smiled. „Let her do the surgery, I'm going to prep her". Meredith asked Derek. „It's fine. Pick her. She can scrub in."

„Thank you Meredith." April smiled.

The others left and Meredith stayed behind with the patient. „He's amazing, isn't he?" the girl said and blushed again.  
„You wouldn't want to wait for him to finish doing up his hair in the morning." Meredith joked and rolled her eyes. He usually took way more time in the bath room than she did and his hair products were positioned in alphabetical order which for Meredith wasn't an increasingly efficient system.  
„You two are dating?" the girl wondered and looked at Meredith.  
„We are married and have a son and we are adopting a little girl." Meredith nodded and started to push the bed towards the door.  
„You are not mad that this red head, Dr. Dr. what's her name? has a huge crush on him?" the girl wondered.  
„I guess I have no reason to be jealous. I love him and he loves me. So why are you having this surgery? Isn't it a little extreme? I mean these are huge risks just for a little blushing." Meredith said.  
„It's not a little blushing. I can't have a secret. I can't hide my emotion. My face conveys everything. Every time I like a boy I turn red like a tomato. How would you live if you couldn't have a secret? What would happen if Dr. Shepherd knew your every thought?" the girl asked. Meredith knew the answer. He'd be mad at her.

Derek was looking at the chart when Meredith sat down next to him „Put that away, we are having dinner." Derek looked up from the chart and said „What happened to Callie was awful. You could have told me."

Meredith's heart rate fastened. He knew, she'd have to tell him everything. „You know?" Meredith looked up from the scan.

„I was surprised you haven't told me, Arizona said Callie told you" Derek said.

Meredith was confused. She had thought that Derek had found out about her suspension following the little trip Callie had done, but apparently it was something else. „What are you talking about?" she asked unsure.

„She was assaulted." Derek said.

„Yeah, somebody pushed her. The guy looked pretty normal." Meredith nodded.

„You've seen the video?" Derek asked.

„Yes, they questioned everybody Callie has been working with and asked whether we remembered any patients who reacted angry or irrational or who might have a reason to do this to her. But Callie – we never screwed up together, all our patients were rather happy when they left." Meredith said. She had not recognized the person who had pushed Callie. She looked away. It was a touchy subject and she had to find a way to tell him, but the minute before he would poke around inside a young girl's brain wasn't the perfect time.

„You are trying to avoid me" Derek noticed.

„I'm not trying to avoid you, Derek." Meredith said.

„You told Kepner she can scrub in with me. You hate Kepner." He teased her.

Meredith rolled her eyes. „I don't hate Kepner and I've scrubbed in on a procedure like this before. Somebody else should be allowed to scrub in, just for the sake of balance." She smiled and prayed that he'd buy her explanation.

„Alright, but you are hiding something." Derek got up and kissed her „and I'm going to…"

Meredith interrupted him. Now was the perfect time to explain „Derek, I…" But before she managed to admit what had happened Derek had walked away after telling her „Tell me later, Mer. A brain is waiting for me."

* * *

Two days later Meredith still hadn't told Derek what had happened. Christopher had gotten sick and she had taken the day off and Derek had been stuck in surgery the entire day. By the time he had came home from the hospital Meredith had fallen asleep in the couch with Zola sleeping in the pram next to her and Christopher resting on the body. Derek had carried the kids into their beds and had woken her up. „You have baby vomit on your shirt" he had whispered into her ear and she had answered „I know. Just let me sleep, Derek. It's been a hard day." „No, you and me are going to take a shower" Derek had insisted. He had picked her up and carried her into the shower. That moment felt like a lifetime ago to her right now. She was watching a fundoplicatio right now. How did she end up in the gallery watching a basic surgery like this?

While Meredith sat in the gallery a middle aged man was approaching Arizona. He seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite pinpoint where she had seen him before. „Excuse me, I'm looking for my daughter. She's a patient here." He said.  
„What's her name?" Arizona asked. „I can look up the name in the system, if you want me to."  
„Callie Torres" he said. ‚Jesus Christ, Callie's dad.' Arizona thought to herself and mumbled „Oh, my god, Mr. Torres."  
Carlos expressed concern. Arizona's reaction appeared strange to someone who did not know about the relationship his daughter was having „What's the matter? Is something wrong with my daughter?" he asked „Chief Webber told me that she was involved in an accident but was fine last night."  
„It was a little bit more than an accident." Arizona said „But she is, she is fine. Uhm… she's in room 402."

* * *

Arizona walked into the gallery and shut the door. Meredith turned around when she heard the sound. Arizona looked at Meredith. She was surprised somebody was in there. The gallery in OR 4 was usually empty because the procedures where so standard and boring that nobody ever bothered to watch them, but there she was: Meredith. Arizona looked at her and said "Meeting Callie's dad was so not on the agenda for today. I mean, he seems like the kind of man who needs a little preparation before meeting his daughter's girlfriend. but you should've seen the look on his face when I—"  
"okay" Meredith said slowly. She had never had a private conversation with Arizona before. „Can you stop doing that thing? "  
"What thing? –" Arizona wondered.  
"That "telling me your business" thing. That pretending like you owe me something. What I did for Callie, I would do it again…" Meredith smiled.

„I know" Arizona nodded „So what are you doing here? OR4 isn't so popular."

„I'm doing what you are doing." Meredith laughed. „You are hiding"  
"You know what? Your son has been sick last night, you shouldn't be here at all. You should be at home sleeping or playing with your daughter and son. You don't have to hide, what you did was brave and noble." Arizona said „You deserve to spend as much time as possible with the people you love"  
"Okay, you can stop doing that thing, too." Meredith got up and walked up to Arizona. Arizona smiled and grabbed Meredith's arm. "Grey, a lot of surgeons forget what it's like to be human, the losses don't get to them. I'm glad you still care about the patient. What you did really helped Callie. She's still not good, but she's getting better. So thank you! Why don't you scrub in with me once you are cleared for surgery again. Peds can be tough. I want to help you and it can be hard on a family – adding another family member takes time and effort and energy."  
"Not mine. My husband is very supportive. He is can't wait for me to start my fellowship. We are going to have five chatty children and a hospital of our own" Meredith stammered.  
Arizona looked at her in shock „He doesn't know, does he?"  
Meredith nodded.  
"Why?" Arizona asked, but before Meredith got the opportunity to answer a nurse walked in and filled in Dr. Robbins on the details of an emergency. "Dr. Robbins, it's Jessica. She just had a seizure. She can't breathe."

* * *

It was lunch time when George finally found Arizona. The pediatric surgeon was eating a cheeseburger with french fries in the cafeteria and was drinking a chocolade milkshake in order to cool off her anxiety. Callie had always said that she was going to tell him about them, but had never found the courage to do so, then she had left for Africa and following her return Callie and her had been barely able to look at each other. „Hey, does he know yet?" George asked.  
„If you're talking about Calliope's dad, then the answer is, I don't know. 'Cause I'm not going to meet him – I mean I met him - because we just started dating again, well we're engaged, but I don't think he knows and it's way too soon." She said „Plus he was kind of terrifying."  
„And Callie is okay with that?" George wondered. He knew how important her dad had been to her while they had been married. „I mean she adores her dad, calls him every day, at least she used to and you two are going to get married."  
„Yeah, he, her idea. The man's here for one day, then he's gone. No muss, no fuss. run." Arizona said and suddenly she mumbled „Run for your life."  
George didn't understand why she'd ask him to do something like that. He never had to run unless he was being paged „What do you mean, run for my life?"  
„Dr. O'Malley, I have to warn you." Arizona said and tried to point to the entrance door of the cafeteria with her eyes.  
„What is it?" George asked. He had no clue why Arizona was doing this strange thing with her eyes.  
„Did you ever get to meet Callie's dad?" she asked  
„Once." George mumbled.  
„Well, you might want to keep it that way. He's here, and he's walking right up to our table." Arizona whispered.  
„Where?" George turned his head nervously but didn't manage to see Callie's father until he looked up to the face of the person that had walked up right beside him. The guy grabbed him and pushed him against a wall. „O'Malley. I'm going to kill you. For all you have done to Callie! Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you right now."  
„Relax, relax!" Arizona yelled and tried to calm Callie's father down. „Mr. Torres calm down! Dr. O'Malley is here to work and he took great care of your granddaughter these past three weeks."  
„Fine." He said and let go George „But he committed adultery."  
„Mr. Torres, I can assure you that nothing happened between me and…" George stuttered while Callie's continued to rant about the shortcomings of his former son in law. „You should get your ass kicked for letting her get away and cheating on her and then you impregnate her."  
„You obviously don't know the whole story." George looked at Arizona.  
„And I don't care about the whole story. What I know is that my daughter is alone and has a baby to take care of." Carlos yelled.  
Arizna took a pity on poor George. Ever since Callie had suffered complications he had been nothing but supportive, he didn't deserve to be treated like that. „She's not alone, Sir." Arizona told him. „She's engaged and planning to get married."  
„Well, in that case I'm delighted to meet the guy." Carlos smiled. „Can you call him for me?"  
„Why don't you go to Callie's room first?" George tried to buy them some time. Callie and he exchanged a short look while George brought Callie's father to her room.

* * *

Meredith was waiting for Derek at the car. He had just finished a seven hour surgery and was looking forward to spending some time with his family. Meredith had picked up the kids at daycare. Now that Christopher's fever was down they had decided to take the kids to the zoo. „Finally get to spend time with you. I haven't seen you in the hospital at all lately." He greeted her and kissed her.  
Meredith bit her lips. „Well, I've been busy." She sighed „Callie's dad arrived this morning"  
„We better get going." Derek said „Won't be long until sun set"  
„Yeah, with these two you are never getting out of the house in time and we never leave the hospital in time." Meredith laughed and turned her head to Zola was was playing with a stuffed giraffe "Are you looking forward to seeing giraffes, Zola? Christopher likes the lions best, but you are a giraffe girl, I say."  
Derek checked Meredith's bagpack „Have you packed their lunch?"  
Meredith nodded and sat down on the driver seat. „Chicken noodles for Christopher and fruit mash for Zola. Salad for you and I'll probably just get a hot dog when we are there."  
Derek got down on the passenger seat „We better get going. I take Zola, you take Christopher."  
„It's so much harder with two kids. Isn't it?" Meredith smiled „I don't know when I slept the last time."  
„Well, you look as good as ever." Derek complimented her. He always had a way of making her smile.

* * *

Callie had sat in her bed all morning. It's all she had been doing ever since she had woken up as she still hadn't been cleared to move around. When the door opened she looked into a familiar face „Dad? What are you doing here?" she asked.  
Carlos hugged her „The hospital called me and told me you were in an accident. Why didn't you tell me?"  
„I didn't want you here. I didn't want you to see me like this. My face is all bruised up and I haven't taken a proper shower since it happened." Callie said.  
„And I come here and find out that you have a fiancé. So you're dating again?" he asked „Well, that's good. That's healthy. I'd like to meet this new gentleman suitor and your friends."  
„Yeah. Yeah, no. sh-we're pretty busy, 'cause we're doctors here. But, um you would love that person. You have to meet my friends. You'll love them, because they're- they're smart and funny and both handsome and-and-and beautiful and-and very supportive." She saw that Arizona was standing at the door and waved at her. She closed her eyes and counted to three in her head. „Daddy please be okay with this. Dadm this is Arizona Robbins. This is who I'm dating now. And I really hope you draw the line at throwing women against walls. She. It is a woman dad. I'm bisexual."  
„Are you serious? Is this some sick jokes?"Carlos asked.  
Callie shook her head. „No dad, if you want to see her, turn around. Arizona Robbins." Arizona looked to the ground. This wasn't going well.  
„I can't do that. I really can't do this. You must be out of your mind." Carlos yelled.  
„No dad, I was never surer of what I wanted. I was never surer of myself." Callie said. „I'm here in a hospital bed and all you care about is whether I am straight or not."  
„I have to go, I just have to go. I can't deal with this." Carlos said and tried to get out the door, but Arizona managed to stop him.  
„Just so you know, I wasn't looking for a relationship. Not with anyone - a he or a she. But it just happened. and, uh it feels good with her. It feels easy and, uh comfortable. I'm saying I'm happy. When have you ever heard me willingly admit that?" Callie said.  
„When you lived at home with your mother and me. You were happy then." Carlos said.  
Callie rolled her eyes. „Yeah, well, I was 12."  
"It didn't take much. You'll fly home with me today. I'll talk to the chief and explain the circumstances." Carlos said.  
"What? No. No, dad, no" Callie muttered. „I'm an adult. I'm not moving back home. I'm on maternity leave for the next few weeks anyway and I'll have lots of time to recuperate because Arizona and George are taking care of me and Arizona"  
"Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay. E-everything is o-okay once you are back with us."

* * *

Meredith and Derek were pushing two strollers through the zoo. "Look at the two of them." Derek started. „They are perfect and they are playing together and"  
„They are ours." Meredith added.  
„They are." Derek said with a smile. „we should go to the penguins. They'll be fed in 20 minutes. I'm sure the kids are going to love that."  
„Yeah. Christopher likes to watch them and the meerkats." Meredith smiled and handed a biscuit to Christopher.  
„He can't get enough of the Meerkats." Derek nodded and remembered the first time they had went to the zoo with Christopher.  
„Maybe we should watch the Lion King with them?" Meredith giggled.  
„Do you want to traumatize them? Mufasa dies." Derek said.  
„Who's Mufasa?" Meredith looked at Derek.  
„Simba's dad." Derek said like it was some sort of public information.  
„You actually watched that movie?" Meredith noted surprised.  
„I have a lot of nieces and nephews." Derek laughed.

„Derek, we need to talk about something." Meredith tried to take advantage of being outside of the hospital. If she told him now, at least they were in a public place and there would be too many witnesses for him to murder her.

„Not now, just look at them." Derek said and remained silent for a second. He looked at his beautiful wife, his children. This was everything he had ever wanted. He was blessed to have this, Meredith had changed his life. He smiled. „When are you going to be at work? Zola got settled in alright and Chris' fever is down. You don't have to stay at home tomorrow. I'm doing a spinal fixation tomorrow and I want you to scrub in"  
„I'm off tomorrow."Meredith lied.  
„I thought I saw your name on the monthly rotation schedule." Derek noted surprised.  
„Schedules change. Christopher, Zola and I are going to spend the whole day together once I went to the Chief's office" Meredith smiled  
„About the adoption?" Derek wondered „You don't have to reduce your hours, Meredith. That's what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn't it?"  
„Uhm…" Meredith bit her lips „but I want to… maybe I want to be a soccer mom who's not working but taking care of the kids, driving them everywhere and waiting for her handsome husband to come home"

„You think I'm handsome?" Derek kissed her neck.

„Derek, I'm serious. I want to tell you something" Meredith said. „Something happened."

They both heared the sound of a pager and looked town to theirs. „It'll have to wait, I just got paged, we have to go." Derek said.

* * *

After a week without surgeries Meredith was running out of places to hide and it was only a matter of time until Derek would find out. She sat in the skills lab and prepared notes. It was rather ironic that she had to teach the interns now. Usually the teacher wasn't someone who had screwed up, but Webber seemed to think that she would do less damage to patients if she taught interns how to do a running whip stitch than if she was actually touching them.

Cristina walked in and wondered „Mer, what are you doing here?"  
Meredith rolled her eyes. Cristina knew what she was doing there „Hiding from my husband who can't find out I was banned from the OR. I'm preparing a lab. What do you think I'm doing?"  
„You still haven't told him?" Cristina asked surprised.  
„No, and I can't tell him, I mean I tried to, but there has to be a built up, I can't tell him straight up" Meredith explained. „Don't you think it's so much harder if you try to do the stitches with the left hand?"  
„Someone is going to tell him. Soon. Just a matter of time. You can do that? The stitches without the leading hand?" Cristina asked surprised.  
„He won't understand it. You know he's not going to understand how I can jepardize the adoption. Besides the next board meeting is tomorrow, so I'm going to be fine after that- I mean they won't wire me – will they? You have to practice."  
„I can't even do knots. I tried. But Shephed will be mad. That's because he doesn't get your dark and twisty side. So what have you been doing all day yesterday?"  
Meredith had taken the day off after she had found out that she had a mild fever. After her temperature had normalized she had left the house. „I went to the shopping center yesterday. Stayed there all day, had frozen Yoghurt, watched people sit there, went to the park with Zola and Christopher and watched more people. It was fascinating. I don't know how people do this. Live like there is nothing to worry about."  
„You went to the shopping center all day?" Cristina asked in disbelief „Only people who are on the edge of an emotional breakdown can stay there all day."  
„My kids were in daycare until lunch and my husband was working." Meredith smiled. „It was only until lunch really."  
„I distracted your husband enough so he wouldn't notice you haven't been in the OR in days." Cristina smiled.  
„I appreciate this. A lot." Meredith noted. „How is Owen? Is he still…"  
Before Meredith was able to finish the sentence Cristina interrupted her „Fine! He's fine." But Meredith eyed her suspicously and Cristina realized that Meredith wasn't buying what she had just told her „He woke up last night and screamed like somebody is killing him."  
„Is he seing a therapist, seeking help?" Meredith wondered.  
„Like Dr. Wyatt?" Cristina asked.  
„Yeah, she would be an option." Meredith nodded. „She's nice. Well, sort of. Anyway, I have to go the interns are waiting."

„Owen is not crazy, he doesn't need a therapist." Cristina said.

„I went to her." Meredith said.

„You are dark and twisty, screwed up." Cristina said and left the room.

„You know if he's not going to talk about it, it's only going to get worse." Meredith yelled. Meanwhile a group of interns walked into the room and sat down in front of the sewing kits Meredith had placed on their desks."

Derek was walking through the hall when he spotted Jackson Avery „Dr. Avery, have you seen my wife?"  
Jackson turned around nervously and began to stutter. Jackson sucked at lying under pressure „No, no, I have not seen her, I absolutely haven't seen her, well I did this morning, but not since then, I haven't seen her, she must be busy. I have seen her a few minutes ago. Unusual place, but I can't quite remember where."  
„Tell her to meet me for lunch. If you see her." Derek winked  
„I will. I definitely will tell her. She will be there at lunch." Jackson stuttered.  
„Good." Derek nodded „See you in the OR at 2."

* * *

„Mr. Torres. You shouldn't leave." Arizona said. She had driven all the way to the Richfield with George and now the two of them were trying to make Carlos stay.  
„This is not your business." He dismissed her and tried to close the room to his door again .  
„I beg your pardon, but I think it is. I care about your daughter." Arizona put per hand into the door frame. „I'm going to marry her. You might not think about it like this, but she is… she's the child you raised."  
„You are going to marry her." Carlos repeated what she had just said. „What stupid charade is this? Callie hasn't told me she's engaged and it's not like you two are really engaged because she can't get really married and how can she be the girl I raised?"  
George explained „Because Callie is tough, she's caring and nothing changed. She is bisexual. I had a hard time accepting it after I found out, but I can assure you, you don't become another person. She's still Callie and there's a very little girl in the NICU and I'm sure she'd like to meet her grandfather."  
"Her name is Sofia Iphegenia Torres and she's a fighter. Just go and see her." Arizona said.

* * *

Jackson walked into the skills lab after all the interns had left the room. „Meredith, your husband wants to meet you for lunch."  
„Why didn't you tell him I was stuck in some surgery?" Meredith wondered.  
„He can read the OR board. You can't hide this from him forever." Jackson said. He knew that he had been on the verge of blaring out the truth to him and sooner or later somebody would.  
„Well, you need to figure something out because I haven't told him that I was suspended." Meredith said „and Christopher is healthy again, Zola got settled in. I'm running out of excuses not to be at the hospital."  
„Well, you should. Tell him. Has the board decided yet?" Jackson asked.  
„They are meeting tomorrow. Webber wants me to come to his office after the meeting." Meredith said.  
„Sounds bad."  
„Yeah. It does, so just make something up." Meredith looked at him.  
„George is going to do it because I have to go and pick up my grandpa at the airport. He's here to weigh in on every decision I ever made in my life." Jackson rolled his eyes.  
„Asking you to do the residency at his hospital?" Meredith giggled. „Move back to Boston? My mom would have been the same, if she had actually supported my decision to become a surgeon"  
„Yes. You know him well." Jackson laughed.  
„I don't I'm royally inbred." Meredith giggled. „I thought what my mother would have told me if she had been okay with me becoming a surgeon which she didn't. She said I didn't have what it takes, well, turns out she was right."  
„She wasn't. My family always treated me like I was pretty, pretty and stupid, pretty stupid. I didn't tell them I was going to study medicine until after I had taken the MCAT." Jackson sighed.  
„Anyway, cover my ass." Meredith got up from her chair. „I'm in the morgue. Cutting into people."  
„We could always go and tell Webber the truth." Jackson suggested.  
„Don't! It was my idea. I can take care of it" Meredith said. „You wouldn't have done it if I wouldn't have asked you to."

„But you couldn't have done it without us."

* * *

 _It's just a cold. Muscle through it. It'll pass. Nothing's really wrong. We're doctors. We'd know if something was really wrong. Wouldn't we?_

* * *

Derek sat next to Meredith on their bed. She was buttoning up the top of her pyjama. She was quiet and ignoring his advances. She was looking at the picture of Christopher and them. He knew something was up. „Meredith, what's the matter? You've been acting very weird for a week now. You'd tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn't you? If this is about the adoption, if this is all going to fast for you…"

„It isn't Derek, it's fine. The adoption is fine." She interrupted him and continued to button up her shirt even though all the buttons had been closed already.

„You'd tell me if something was wrong, wouldn't you?" he asked again.

Meredith bit her lip and figured it was too late to tell him and technically he was asking if something was wrong with the adoption , which it wasn't. „Yeah, I would." Meredith mumbled and looked at Derek. She kissed him and felt that his arms were pulling her closer to him.


	25. Chapter 25

Sorry I haven't been updating this in a while, but I just didn't feel like writing -this chapter in particular- and with my mom having started chemo and the doctors encouraged me to get some genetic testing done which I'm not sure I want to do, so I had a lot on my mind this past week. Thank you for your encouragement though!

Sara: This is definitely something to be worried about! You'll see how everything progresses throughout the course of the next chapters.

Patsy: Thanks for your two reviews! I'll get into more details. Don't forget that Richard knows about his daughter and his resentment for Ellis at this stage which certainly should be considered here and Derek isn't mad at her for what she did, but because she hasn't told him about this.

Melanie: Communication is the key here and all of us know that Meredith is not great at communicating and neither is Derek when it comes to talking about his feelings. They are going to have to deals with a lot and they'll have to deal with some of it on their own, but people who are in love always find their way back to each other.

Judy: Thanks! Yeah, what's going to happen will truly be a shock for Meredith

Dora: Thanks for the review! It was a bomb and this chapter is going to offset a few storylines for the next few chapters, so buckle up your seat belt.

Ellen: Thank you for the review! Hope you are enjoying the update!

Susan: Hope you are better now! Meredith never thought that things would get so serious! It might be too late to talk now!

Shelley: Hope you enjoy the next update

Carolyn: Oh, that's dreadful! Hope everything is back in place for you now.

Lynette: You definitely need your tissues!

Charlene: Sorry for taking so much time to update! Hope you are enjoying this one!

Kiley: No, Meredith won't confess. You are right on track about the rest.

Stephanie: Thanks for your review! Hope you are enjoying this update!

Anita: Thanks for the review! Hope the suspense didn't kill you!

* * *

Chapter 25

 _Surgeons are detail oriented. We like statistics and checklists and operating procedures. Our patients live because we enjoy following the steps. But, as much as we love to always rely on the numbers, the plan, we also know that some of the greatest medical discoveries have happened by accident. Mold- penicillin, poisonous tree bark- a cure for malaria, a little blue pill for high blood pressure- impotence pre-empted... It's hard for us to accept that's not always the hard work or attention to detail that get us the answers we're looking for. Sometimes, we just have to sit back, relax and wait a happy accident._

* * *

Meredith sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the table. She knew that the board had met a few hours earlier and asked "You wanted to see me?"  
Richard sighed and looked at a sheet of paper. "I'm sorry to tell you, but the board has decided to remove you permanently. The board met this morning and discussed the matter with me. We feel that a suspension would send the wrong message." Meredith heard the word subconscienciously and hundreds of thoughts rushed through her head ‚She was fired, what would she do, what would Derek say, what would the other say' while Richard continued to inform her „They looked at your file and they remembered the incident with the LVAD wire, they saw the note from Dr. Miller where you and Karev took his patient to the OR without his consent, they looked at this incident and Meredith, I told you not to wheel patient around the hospital . We feel that what you did disgraced the hospital, the profession." End. He had stopped talking and Meredith looked at Richard.  
She laughed "I disgraced the hospital by bringing a mother to see her child?" She couldn't imagine how stupid that sounds.  
"You're no longer a doctor at Seattle Grace. You're fired, effective immediately, I'm very sorry Meredith. They didn't care about the circumstances. You crossed a line here and it wasn't the first time. There have to have to be consequences." Richard said and looked down at this paper.  
"Fine. I'll go now. Goodbye." Meredith got up from her seat and started to walk out of the room.  
"Fine? This is clearly not fine." Dr. Webber yelled „You just got fired. Does being a doctor mean so little to you?"

„It doesn't Richard, I love being a doctor, but I guess there's nothing I can do about it. Your decision is final and you don't have to look into my face anymore, into the face that resembles her face. That's why…" Meredith said shaking with tears.

„I can help you to find a job somewhere else, Meredith." Richard assured her, but Meredith was sure it had been him who had insisted on firing her. She snapped. "Are you asking this as my boss or my mother's ex lover slash half sister's bio dad? It is fine, Dr. Webber, I'll pick up the kids from day-care now and go to the park with them and I don't need your help."  
"Meredith, let me help you" Richard insisted and Meredith turned around. Her eyes focused Richard.  
"Chief, Dr. Webber, respectfully, I don't think as of now this what I choose to do or not do is any of your business. I can find a new job without your help and even if I don't, I don't have to be a surgeon, I'm a mother and I enjoy being a mother. I'm not like my mother or my sister. I'll go now. Good bye."

After Meredith had left the room he sat down on his chair and looked at the directive in front of him. Ellis would hate him and right now he hated himself because he was sure if he had pushed the board harder to keep her like he had done for Isobel Stevens after the LVAD incident they would have listened to him, but now things were said and done.

* * *

Meredith was walking down the hall when Cristina caught up with her „I misdiagnosed Harper Avery in front of Harper Avery. Do you know what that does to my chances of one day winning a Harper Avery award now?" He had been brought into the ER accompanied by Jackson after experiencing abdominal pain and was now laying in an ER bed waiting to be admitted.  
„Well, he could die before then. I mean, he could die today even." Meredith suggested and added „I was fired. The board fired me"  
„Is it true Harper Avery is here?" Lexie approached them.  
"So George walked in on her naked this morning while she got it on with Alex." Meredith told Cristina.  
„Meredith! What?" Lexie coughed.  
"Oh, I'm just cheering her up. She's having a bad day. Be generous." Meredith stated. In fact all of them have had a bad day so far.  
"You are having a bad day. We are all having a bad day." Cristina nodded and another man approached the circle of women.

„Bad day? Well Yang, I heard you met Harper Avery." Derek chuckled. Cristina's clumsy attempt to impress Harper Avery with her limited knowledge in general surgery had been discussed everywhere around the hospital.  
„Did you know that pretty boy's grandfather was God?" Cristina asked Derek.  
„Yes, Meredith told me right after the merger. It's kind of cool that she told me and not you, though." Derek explained.  
"You knew?" Cristina asked him and looked at Meredith.  
"I know a lot of things" Meredith smiled.  
„No, it's not cool. Okay, he's an entitled brat with no skills except for a really good bloodline" Cristina said.  
„It is not Jackson's fault that he's related to Harper Avery." Meredith stated.  
„Oh, whatever, Ellis Grey's daughter." Cristina coughed.  
„Huh? How do I look? " Derek wondered and put on a tie.  
„What, are you nervous?" Meredith laughed.  
„He's one of the most powerful surgeons in the country." Derek insisted.  
„He's just a guy who happens to have an award named after him." Meredith said.  
„Whatever, Ellis Grey's daughter." Derek said and kissed her cheek „You want to meet him too."  
„I met him before and I have to go." Meredith said. After Derek had left Cristina leaned over to Meredith „Where are you going?" Cristina asked „I mean you have to hand over your pager and ID card to HR now, but after that"  
„Home, to the park, wherever, I was fired I can go wherever I want. Well, first I'm going to complete my leftover charts, but after that I'm going home." Meredith sighed.  
„What?" Cristina wondered. She was surprised she had not expected Meredith to go out without fight.  
„Fired as in no longer working here." Meredith repeated.  
„I'm not stupid. I know what fired means. I may have misdiagnosed god, but I'm not stupid. Have you told Derek?" Cristina asked.  
„No. He doesn't even know about the suspension. I'm lucky he's been too caught up in his research recently – whatever that is about..." Meredith smiled „I'll see how Zola is doing. The kids are the only thing I can feel good about right now and maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I mean now I get to spend all this time with my kids."

* * *

Meredith sat on the floor at day-care with Christopher and Zola beside her. "Zola, peekaboo. Peekaboo" she giggled when Janet approached her. She turned her head and said "Hi, Janet."  
Janet smiled and greeted her „Hey, Meredith. I'm just finishing up your home study, and I thought I'd check and see how Zola's doing? "  
"She is doing great." Meredith smiled. She was still wearing her light blue scrubs holding on to the notion that everything would somehow turn out to be fine.  
„I figured you'd be busy today." Janet said surprised. She was right. The ER was packed and most of her friends were working overtime.  
"Yeah, I'm just, uh, in between surgeries." She lied „and with to kids, I guess I'll just make more time."  
„So how are things going? Is she sleeping through the night?" Janet wondered.  
"No, I not really. Um, she's up a few times. But it's fine. I don't mind. I'm used to it with Cristopher." Meredith smiled.  
„Just you, or are you guys taking turns?" Janet wondered.  
"No, yes, well, he's great with her. He's, Derek's great with her. With both of them." Meredith said.  
The kindergartener approached both of them and wondered „Dr. Grey, is Dr. Shepherd going to pick the kids up from now on or are you still coming in for that? But you can take her home now."  
„Wait. I don't understand." Janet interjected.  
„No. I am." Meredith said „We are still taking turns dropping her off and picking her up. I'm not taking her home. I just came to, uh, to-to say hi. I actually should get back to work. Okay, Zola. I'm going to go."  
„Okay." Janet said slightly irritated looking at the kindergartener.  
„It was nice to see you, Janet." Meredith smiled and got up.  
„You, too, Meredith." Janet smiled.

* * *

Jackson and his grandpa were still sitting in an bed in the packed ER. A woman was constantly on her phone and had told the story about how they had gotten there on the phone for what felt like the twentieth time. Dr. Bailey approached the bed and Jackson's granddad asked "Why is this taking so long?! Is it me or are those two women terribly annoying?"  
"Bailey my apologies, Dr. Avery." Bailey introduced herself.  
„Dr. Shepherd, we're working on getting you up to your own room as soon as poss- " Derek said when he approached the bed, but William Harper Avery interrupted him.  
"You said that before. Are you the same Shepherd who did the clinical trial on the gliomas?" Jackson's granddad asked.  
„Yes, sir." Derek nodded.  
"You brought me a neurosurgeon for some abdominal cramps?" he looked at Dr. Bailey „I don't need a cruise director. I need an experienced surgeon. Page Dr. Grey."  
„You are asking for an experienced surgeon and ask us to page a resident?" Derek wondered.  
This remark sent Jackson's granddad into a little rage "Ellis Grey is not a resident. I hope you've heard of her because otherwise I'd question how you passed medical school."  
Bailey looked at him and said „and she's dead and her daughter isn't working here anymore. I can get you her half sister. She's a resident too."  
"Who else then? Does, uh, Richard Webber still work here? " He looked up.  
Dr. Bailey said. Dr. Webber had left the hospital after he had told her that Meredith had been fired and she was the one that had to made sure she wouldn't touch another patient. „Unfortunately, he is, uh, he is not available today."  
„I'll page Dr. Webber. Dr. Bailey, can I have a word with you?" Derek wondered.

After they had walked into an empty trauma room Dr. Bailey looked up to the neuro surgeon and wondered „Dr. Shepherd, what's the matter?"  
"You said that Meredith wasn't working here anymore." Derek said.  
"She isn't. She was suspended and the board decided to fire her for that insanely stupid thing she did." Bailey said. „I can't believe she'd throw away her career like that"  
"What has she done?" Derek asked in shock.  
"That's something your wife should be telling you." Dr. Bailey said and walked out of the room. „I have to get back to my patient."

* * *

After they had done a few tests and had brought him up to a private room Dr. Webber and Dr. Bailey were discussing the diagnosis with him „As you can see, you've got dilated bowel here and here, Indicating an obstruction."  
„It's a good thing that our young dr. Avery Brought you straight in." Bailey noted.  
„Dr. Bailey can do the surgery right away." Dr. Webber said and looked down.  
Jackson looked at his grandfather and closed his eyes because he knew what he was about to say. "I want Webber. No offense." Jackson heard.  
„None taken." Bailey smiled and handed over the chart.  
„Dr. Bailey is more than capable of performing the surgery—" Dr. Webber said.  
"I want you." Jackson's grandfather insisted "And I want to watch."  
"What?" Bailey's and Jackson's eyes widened.  
"I'm going to be awake for my surgery and watch." Jackson's granddad said.  
„So much for the low-stress day." Jackson muttered. „A packed ER and my grandfather wants an awake surgery"  
"And I want Dr. Grey's daughter to assist you. Jackson spoke very highly of her and Jackie should be in there as well." He said and all of them looked at him.

* * *

Carlos approached the blonde surgeon that was supposedly his daughter's fiancée „Dr. Robbins?"  
Arizona turned around and looked into his face. „Mr. Torres. I'm surprised to see you."  
„I'd like to see my granddaughter." Carlos said. „You said I could see her."  
„Alright, I'll get you a nurse and she's going to bring you to the NICU. I'll be here checking on patients if you need me. Do you want me to page…" Arizona said enthusiastically, but Carlos interrupted her. „No it's fine." He said. He wasn't ready to look at his daughter yet, but after all the little girl was his granddaughter.  
„Just a little warning. Sofia was born very premature and there are still a few tubes attached to her." Arizona explained. „That's normal and so far she has developed very well because she has been monitored very closely and because we were lucky. Dr. O'Malley spent almost his entire time off looking at that child and observing her vitals."  
Carlos said like it was a matter of course „He's the father."  
„Well, Callie obviously hasn't told you everything." Arizona smiled „I'm not sure if it's really my place to tell you, but Callie went to a sperm bank. He wrote something on the form that she sort of recognized and she was immediately drawn to his profile. She didn't realize it was him until after she had told him that she was pregnant. But she thought it was a sign from the universe telling her that she should pick her ex-husband as father of her child. Nurse Susan, can you take Mr. Torres to the NICU?"

* * *

"Meredith, what did you say to Janet?" Derek asked angrily.  
"Nothing. Why?" Meredith eyes widened and looked at Derek in shock.  
"I just finished answering a whole slew of questions about your employment details and your future." Derek yelled.  
"She's finishing her home study.- That's routine." Meredith said and tried to calm him down.  
" Okay, there was nothing routine when she said that HR told her you were fired and Bailey confirmed it. Apparently I'm the last to hear about this." Derek yelled. ‚He knows, crap!' she thought.  
"What did she say?" Meredith asked.  
"She said that she spoke to you and that some red flags went up, so she checked with HR." Derek said „and Dr. Bailey told me it wasn't her place to tell me why you were fired"  
"Well, I did see her earlier, but I didn't say anything." Meredith said and suddenly her pager went off. "I gotta go. Webber wants me to scrub in on a surgery." Derek stood still.

* * *

It was a surreal situation. Meredith was standing in the OR, next to the man who had fired her merely three hours ago and the patient was the wide awake Harper Avery who had insisted on having her in the OR together with his own grandson. "Not a bad looking bowel, is it, Webber?" Harper Avery asked.  
"No, sir. If I had to guess, I would say it was the bowel of a 50 year old." Dr. Webber said. "Suction, Dr. Grey."  
"Dr. Grey, I've got a question for you. It's of a personal nature." Harper Avery said and looked at her.  
"Yes, sir?" she smiled behind her mask while Jackson looked at her nervously.  
"If your mother was still working here, Would you have chosen to, uh, Study at a-a different, lesser quality hospital In order to avoid the advantages of her legacy?" he asked. She didn't say a word, but he insisted. „I'm waiting here, Dr. Grey."  
„Um Dr. Webber, What do you think about intraoperational dye to help determine intestinal viability?" Jackson interrupted them.  
„Uh, well, they say that it enhances clinical judgment. I'm not real sure." Webber replied.

The gallery was packed, everyone wanted to see this surgery. „I don't get it. Why does he get to scrub in on his own grandfather's awake surgery?" Lexie wondered.  
„The same reason why Harper Avery personally requested Meredith Grey to be his resident and Webber granted that even though he fired her this morning" Cristina said.  
„Nepotism sucks." Alex said and looked at Cristina „Mer is fired?"  
„Yeah, because of that stupid thing ALL of you had a part in." Cristina said and looked at April, George, Lexie and Alex „Seriously people, you can't do this. Meredith got fired and we all know she didn't bring Callie there herself."  
„What are we supposed to do?" George wondered.  
„Tell Webber what happened." Cristina suggested.  
„Yeah, she told us that we weren't supposed to say anything." Alex said.  
„She got kicked out of the program because of something all of you did. Don't let her take the fall for that. If you don't go to Webber, I will." Cristina said.  
„What?" George asked.  
„People, when Izzie cut that LVAD wire we stuck together, Lexie and April, you don't know about that, but George and Alex, you do. We all took the blame, Meredith opened her house to you, Lexie, George, Alex, you've all been living there." Cristina said „She loves that job and we love her. We owe her that much"  
„What's going to happen Yang? She got fired, I don't want to get fired, too. I worked too hard to get here." April said. „Reed is working somewhere in the middle of nowhere now"  
„I have to go. I got a page from Hunt." George said and left the gallery in a hurry.  
„Cristina, I'll talk to them and Avery and Kepner. I have to get back to Dr. Hunt now. too" Lexie promised and hurried.

Suddenly the monitors indicated signs of distress. „BP's dropping." Jackson said.  
„I think I've got a bleeder." Webber said "Suction."  
"Did you check the SMA ?" Dr. Avery asked while most of the surgeons hastily tried to locate the bleeder.  
„Yes, it's okay. Dr. Avery, stay calm." Dr. Webber said while the monitor indicated that the problem got worse.  
"I'll be calm when you find the damn thing." He said.

Jackson looked at the monitors and knew that there were clear signs that there was something to worry about. "Okay, shouldn't we put him out?"  
"No, don't put me out." His grandfather insisted.  
„Hang another unit of FFP. Meredith told the nurse.  
"There it is. I've got it. I've got it." Dr. Webber finally said and the monitors began to return to normal and his vitals stabilized.  
„Okay. How are you feeling, Dr. Avery?" Dr. Webber wondered.  
"Okay." He said.  
„Heart rate's stabilizing." Jackson said with relief.  
„Hang in there just a few more minutes, okay?" Dr. Webber said with a smile.  
"No, use chromic. Don't get lazy on me." Harper Avery insisted.  
Jackson rolled his eyes and said „Yep, he's fine."  
„Chromic instead, Boki." Richard nodded.

* * *

After surgery Jackson didn't have a minute to himself. A bunch of residents gathered around Jackson in the resident locker room. All of them had heard that Harper Avery was in the hospital and tried to persuade Jackson to introduce them to him "Look, it's not going to happen, all right?"  
„Come on, man. Five minutes with your grandpappy. That's all I ask." Alex said.  
"Right, 'cause the two of us are such good friends." Jackson said surprised. „He's an old man who just had surgery, he needs to be left alone"  
„Well, this would go a long way to help that." Another resident said and pulled out a few bank notes.  
„Back off, Karev, if anybody's a friend here, It's me." April said.  
"You're not meeting him either, April." Jackson insisted „Nobody is meeting him"

After they had left Jackson sat down next to Meredith „I hate it. I hate it when they know I'm related to him- The way they treat me, The way they watch me as soon as they find out. And I know the name has helped, But he is not easy. Brilliant, but really not easy to be related to."  
Meredith put down her pen and smiled „I know. That's why I haven't told anyone. But I honestly don't care because I was fired and the only reason I'm wearing my scrubs right now is because he personally requested me and Webber tries to suck up to him. But that probably was the last time I've ever been in an OR"  
They were interrupted. Jackson's pager vibrated. Jackson and Meredith looked at the pager „It's him. 9-1-1."

* * *

Jackson and Meredith ran as fast as they could "What is it? You paged? Are you okay?" Jackson wondered when they had reached his room .  
"We never got a chance to finish our talk from this morning." The surgeon said. Meredith and Jackson exchanged a glance.  
„Our talk? What, are you kidding me?" Jackson coughed.  
"And you brought Dr. Grey. That's good, actually." He smiled „You look more like your mother everyday. We haven't seen each other in a long time and you got rid of the pink highlights that your mother hated so much. Answer me this time, Dr. Grey. If a spot was being held for you to study at the greatest hospital in this country, would you turn it down?"  
„A spot? Well—" Meredith bit her lower lip.  
„Yeah, he saved a spot for me at Mass Gen" Jackson explained „Ever since I graduated, which is the only reason he came to visit- To try to convince me to take it again."  
„It's an incredible opportunity." Meredith said.  
„An opportunity I don't want." Jackson interrupted her and looked at his grandfather „I don't want to work for you. I don't want your help. I don't-look, it's enough—"  
"No! I decide when I've said enough." Jackson's grandfather yelled. „I-you-you think I am arrogant and overbearing and you've made that very clear, and maybe I am. But I am also your only living grandfather. And it has become very clear to me today that my time is coming. I don't-I can't l-leave- leave—" the ECG heart monitor showed rapid movement.  
„Grandpa? Grandpa? V-tach. No pulse. No pulse here. We need a crash cart in here. Now!" Jackson yelled.

* * *

Meredith, Jackson, Bailey and Dr. Webber were all standing in the room. „Your CT shows that there's been a complication. Dr. Webber will take you back into the OR. And fix it right away." Bailey told Dr. Avery after looking at his scans.  
"Fine, but you're not putting me out. Clearly a mistake was made. I'm not letting that happen again." Jackson's grandfather said „That's not going to happen this time."  
Richard got mad „You're in my hospital today. You will abide by my rules. That means you go under general. Your grandson will be sitting in the waiting room as family. You refuse, and I will personally declare you unfit to make decisions regarding your own care. Have Bailey do the surgery and Grey, you go home now." Meredith nodded and left the room without a word.

* * *

They brought him back into the OR and opened up the sutures again. „His bowels are all swollen and hardened." Bailey said after examining him.  
„The anastomosis is leaking which explains why he went into shock." Dr. Webber looked at the ultrasound.  
„All in all, I'd say this is about the best news we could've asked for, Dr. Webber." Bailey smiled.  
April looked surprised and confused „I don't understand. His bowels are perforated. He's leaking intestinal contents."  
„Because Dr. Avery was allergic to the chromic suture." Dr. Webber explained „He didn't know because he was always wearing gloves in his own surgeries."  
„And you couldn't have known either—" Bailey added.  
„Which is why I am smiling behind this mask. Get the 3-0 silk ready, Boki." Dr. Webber said and began to exchange the chromic with silk.

* * *

After surgery Meredith hurried to get to day-care where Janet and Derek were waiting for her. „Hey, you called." She said. Janet looked at her in surprise, after all she was wearing scrubs and a nurse had told her she had been in surgery.  
„A lot of questions came up today about your relationship, about your employment." Janet said and bit her lips.  
„Well you are not the only one with questions about her employment." Derek added and glanced at Meredith  
„You're allowed to have some bumps in the road. But this afternoon, it looked like your wife got fired, she lied to me about it." Janet said.  
„and I'm sorry about that." Meredith said.  
„I talked to Dr. Torres about the incident, but I set off some alarms. Now I'm trying to dial them all back, but it's not that easy to do. Once the system is set in motion, there's a certain protocol that has to be followed. Once the agency believes that there are questions about Meredith …" Janet explained, but Derek interrupted her.  
„Janet, Meredith is the best mother a child could have. She loves Zola. She loves me. And if there is a flaw with her, it's she loves people so much that she'll do anything for them." Derek said and for a second Meredith was relieved that he seemed to understand.  
„Derek, please. I hear you. But no matter what I say, social services still has to revaluate the placement. And while that happens, Zola can't be in your home. I'll give you a minute to say good-bye." Janet said.

After fifteen minutes Janet came back into the room. "Sorry, it's time to go."  
"Derek." Meredith tried to encourage him to hand Zola over to Janet, but he didn't look at her and turned around and walked to Janet.  
"Here you go." Derek said, kissing Zola's cheek and placing the child into Janet's arms.  
Meredith walked up to Janet "Janet is a very nice lady. We like her a lot. She's going to find you a very nice family to go stay with for a while. And then you're going to come right back to us, and everything's going to be fine."  
Janet looked at Meredith and Derek they both nodded. „Okay."  
Meredith handed over Zola's diaper bag to Janet "She likes her bottle room temperature, not too warm. And she cannot sleep without that giraffe. It's in the front pocket of the diaper bag. And there's extra pacifiers in there. You're going to need them when you p-put her in the car." They watched Janet leave the room and heard the sound of the closing door. Neither one of them said a word. Meredith looked at Derek, but Derek didn't look at her. After he turned his head and looked into her eyes by accident he left the room and Meredith stayed in there alone. She was alone.

* * *

"Hey. So he's fine?" Meredith asked and looked up from the last charts she was updating. „Lexie said it was an allergy caused by the suture."  
"It was his fault. Wow. That's awesome. Why don't they publish that story? Yeah, I know." Jackson laughed and sat down next to her.  
"I get it. The famous grandfather, the legacy he's trying to force on you, and you didn't ask for any of it- -trust me, I get it." Meredith said „You're putting up walls and you're avoiding him. And you don't want to introduce him to your friends. It was the same with my mother. But if she were here right now in a room upstairs, I would want to go see her and make things right with her. And I definitely would want to go learn from her. And you still can." They sat next to each other for a while, Jackson looked at the movement of the pen while Meredith finished the last few lines.

When she was finished she put her pen down, she looked at Jackson and sighed „Anyway, I have to leave now because I was fired. Do you think your grandfather would give me a job because in that OR I sort of realized that I can't be a housewife for the rest of my life? And at the moment I don't even know whether the wife part is going to last that much longer."  
"You're desperate." Jackson laughed.  
Meredith looked at him. "I have to go home to my husband, who didn't know I was fired and the social worker took away Zola because I was fired and I didn't tell her and Derek left 13 angry voicemails while I was in the OR with you and a hour ago we had to say goodbye to Zola." Meredith said and took a deep breath. She deeply regretted how everything had played out those last few days.  
"I'll see what I can do." Jackson said and looked at the charts Meredith had completed „I'll put in a good word for you, but I'm sure I don't need to."

* * *

Meredith sat in the living room with a cup of tea. She sometimes hated the loneliness of the house in the woods. She was alone, Derek hadn't come home. There was a possibility that he had gotten pulled into an emergency surgery, but she wasn't sure that this was the reason he hadn't come home. She knew he was mad at her but she had hoped that she would at least get to explain what had happened. So she was just sitting in the living room and starred at the door knob, hoping it would turn and he would come home, but as the hours passed she was getting less hopeful and all of a sudden the silence was broken and she heard a noise from the baby monitor. Christopher was up. She got up and went to his room. „Hey baby, you don't have to cry. Everything is going to be fine. Mommy screwed up, honey, we do that sometimes. But I want you to remember that whatever happens I'm always going to love you, buddy. I'm not perfect, but I don't know a perfect person. I only know flawed people and I hope that your dad still thinks I'm love worthy when he finds out what I did." She cradled him and carried him into her bed room, she pulled him closer to her after she lay down next to him. Derek wouldn't come home tonight.

* * *

 _No matter how many plans we make, or steps we follow, we never know how our day is going to end up. We'd prefer to know of course, what curve balls would be thrown on our way. It's the accidents that always turn out to be the most interesting parts of our day, of life. The people we never expected to show up. The turn of events we never would've chosen for ourselves. All of a sudden, you find yourself somewhere you never expected to be. And it's nice, or it takes some getting used to. Still, you know you'll find yourself appreciating it somewhere down the line. So you go to sleep each night thinking about tomorrow, going over your plans, preparing the lists and hoping that whatever accidents come in our way will be happy ones._

* * *

Arizona sat in front of Sofia's bed when George walked into the room. „We put her off the ventilator, she can breathe on her own." Arizona said. George sat down next to her. „I know, I'm… I don't know what I am… but I care for her…" George said a a tear rolled down his chin. „She can breathe. She will live."

„Our little girl is going to live" Arizona nodded „I know, you are a good person, George. She's so tiny. I work with tiny babies everyday, but if it's your tiny baby it's different. You worry and you never stop worrying."

„But she's a fighter, she beat the odds." George smiled and took her little hand.


	26. Chapter 26

**Finally got to update this! The holiday has been amazing! 2 weeks without internet or mobile phones was kind of relaxing... Thanks for all the reviews! I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season and manages to escape the stress...**

* * *

 **Chapter 26**

 _I always said I'd be happier alone. I'd have my work, my friends... But someone in your life all the time? More trouble than it's worth. Apparently, I got over it._

„That was a long day." Jackson sighed when he sat down next to April at Joe's Bar.

The red head looked up at him „How's your granddad?" _I would have loved to scrub in on that surgery_. She thought to herself, but lately most attendings had sidelined her. While Cristina and Meredith were popular among attendings she felt like a dud. Even with Meredith gone she didn't have a lot of hope things would improve soon. Residency was hard on everyone – the worst years of her life, but at least talking to Jackson made her feel better. She smiled and he looked at the Scotch he had just ordered.

„Fine,he'll live and be the overbearing know it all he's always been." Jackson started to babble which didn't quite seem like him. He wasn't much of a talker. „But I might tell someone to use chromic …"

„You wouldn't…" April smiled. She knew that her friend was rather kind hearted, way too kind hearted and loving to ever do harm to anyone.

„No, I wouldn't…" he nodded. Jackson looked at his fingers. Avery fingers- Jackson thought about the words Meredith had offered to him „April, have you ever wondered why we hold ourselves back? I mean there are things I always wanted to do and I always kept worrying about what would happen..." He said the words and moved closer to April.

„Jackson, what are you doing?" April whishered when Jackson's lips moved closer to hers.

„I thought …." He whishered and tried to kiss her.

„You are… Jackson…. I can't" April pushed him back and walked out. He looked at his drink again. His family issues were something he had to figure out himself. Maybe it was time to check on his grandfather again and ask him to give Meredith his spot at MassGen.

* * *

Meredith walked into the hospital. She had dropped of Christopher at daycare. The past night had been horrible. She had sat on the couch and starred at the door. Derek had been off at 6pm, but he never came home. Who'd blame him? Meredith thought to herself. He had been blindsighed for weeks. She went to the attendings lounge as she knew the weekly attendings meeting had just started. When she took a peek through the blinds she saw Derek, Dr. Webber, Dr. Bailey and all the other attendings. It seemed like she took a peek at the life she once knew, a life that seemed to be a milion miles away now. When the meeting resumed Derek came out the door and stormed off once he saw her. She tried her best to keep up with him, but he went into the scrub room which was off limits for her now.

Meredith sat on the couch again and looked at the door. She wondered if her husband would ever come home again. She almost didn't know what to say when he finally walked into the house „Where have you been? You didn't come home last night" she said and looked at him. She hoped that he would be sympathetic, but he was still mad.

"Meredith, I don't even know what to say! I needed time! You were fired and you don't tell me and our child was taken away because you lied to the social worker!" he said, but kept walking to the bed room carrying their son. He put down Christopher and started to pack his bags. When Meredith came into the room he stopped and asked harshly. „Care to tell me why? Because I think I deserve an explanation!"  
"I'm sorry." Meredith tried to apologize „Yes, I can tell you, but first I'm going to put Christopher to bed. He doesn't have to hear us yelling at each other. I was helping Callie, I was only helping a patient- do you really want to hate me for that?"  
"Helping a patient doesn't get you fired Meredith." Derek fought back „You should have told me the truth Meredith."  
"Well, I did. And now let me get Christopher to his bed." Meredith said and looked at Christopher „Want to go to bed, sweetie? You look tired" When she came back to the living room she sat down and looked at Derek. He looked at her and sat down on the opposite side of the living room table.  
"They took Zola because you didn't disclose the fact that you have been suspended for almost two weeks and were fired by the board. You lied to me. If you would have told me the truth, I'd have been mad, but I would have gotten over it. Maybe I could have sweet talked someone on the board into... you know they like me. But you lied and I don't know whether I'm ever going be able to trust you with anything again. We could lose her forever because of you. It was your choice. She could get send back to Malawi."  
"Don't you think I know that?" Meredith asked. „Don't you think I felt bad for lying to you? You don't know what happened. Don't you blame me for doing the right thing!"  
"What did you do exactly? I want the whole story" Derek demanded.  
"I brought Callie to see Sofia in the NICU." Meredith summarized. It was all she had done, she had put her friends and her patients first.  
"How did that get you fired?" He wondered, closed his eyes. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.  
Meredith opened her mouth "I took Callie to see Sofia even though Bailey said she wasn't allowed to move yet. Technically she didn't. We pushed her bed to the NICU and she held Sofia. They were fine, but Sofia's monitor went off, Callie fainted because of the stress that's why Bailey caught us. She wasn't allowed to move yet because of… "  
"Are you out of your mind? How could you possibly risk your job over this?" Derek wondered „How could you jepardize the adoption like this?"  
"You said you loved that I was compassionate." Meredith looked at Derek. She had to remind him why he had fallen in love with her „That was me being compassionate. Sofia was twelve weeks old and Callie hadn't seen her yet. You don't understand what this is doing to a mom."  
"This has nothing to do with compassion, this is stupid! Callie Torres wasn't cleared to move around yet." Derek yelled „And I understand what this is doing to a dad. I can't see Zola now. "  
"Neither can I." Meredith tried to calm Derek down. She hadn't done anything in order to hurt him, but somehow it was her fault.  
"And whose fault is that?" Derek coughed and went back into the bed room. Meredith followed him. While she watched him pack his bag he wondered „So, what are you going to do with your life now? Run away? Because you certainly know how to do that"  
"Are you not going to love me if I'm not a surgeon?" Meredith asked.  
"I'm not going to love you if you keep putting our family at risk." Derek said.  
"Wow." Meredith said in surprise. Derek pushed her away.  
"I can't raise children with someone who doesn't know right from wrong." Derek closed the zipper of his bag.  
"Do you think it was wrong to let Callie see her kid, really? How would you feel if I just took Christopher and left and you wouldn't see him for twelve weeks?" Meredith asked.  
"You are not going to do that!" Derek told her.  
"No, obviously I'm not going to do that. I'm not that person." Meredith stated and sat down next to Derek's bag. Looking at him, begging for him to look at her.  
"Right now I don't know what kind of person you are." Derek told her and grabbed his bag.

"What are you doing?" Meredith wondered.  
"Leaving. I need to think" Derek said.  
"Where are you going?" Meredith wondered.  
"Away, Meredith." Derek said „Have a good day. I can't be here right now. Drop off Christopher at daycare tomorrow" Meredith nodded and Derek wondered. "You don't care about Zola at all?"  
"I do, that's why I have to let you go, Derek and give you the time you need before you are able to let me tell you everything. You don't know the story and you are not ready to let go off your anger. Callie wanted to see her kid and I wanted … nevermind, Derek, you need space to breathe"

„Meredith, I'm on call tonight, he can stay with you, just drop him off at daycare" were the last words he said before he left. Meredith was alone in the house Derek had built for them. He had left and she was starring at an empty closet. She couldn't stay the sight of it.

* * *

I open my eyes because someone just opened the door. The lights in the hall are bright. The nurse is looking at me. She's saying something and it takes me a while to process what I'm hearing. Christopher is in surgery. My son has a hematoma. Dr. Nelson is operating on him and I have to watch from the gallery. Mark is by my side, telling me that everything is going to be fine. He's petting my bag, he tries to calm me down, but we both know Nelson is taking way too long, we both know he's not going to survive this accident. Yesterday I thought I had the perfect live and today I find out that my wife betrayed me and my son was in an accident which he probably won't survive. I wonder where Meredith is, but I'm afraid to because what happens if she is gone? She must have been with Christopher when it happened. A little boy wouldn't have been on his own. I see the monitor. Right now he's still alive, he's breathing. You are alive if you are still breathing, but there's a neurosurgeon poking around in his brain, trying to fix the bleed and reduce the swelling and he's going to die. I'm sure he is. Mark looks like he is and Nelson only tries because he knows it's my son on his table. There's light and somebody is looking at me.

* * *

„Kepner, bay 2" Owen shouted and assigned one of the beds to April. She looked rather surprised to find the attending at the ER at this hour of the night. He had told her that he would be on a date, but apperently this had been cut short. „Sure" April nodded „By the way, what are you doing here? I thought you and Cristina were going to have dinner."

„They paged me" Owen lied. He knew that April wouldn't buy this lie, but he didn't really intend to answer any questions about how wrong the dinner at their favorite Italian restaurant had went.

„No they didn't. The ER is empty" April said, but the look with which Owen replied made her turn around and walk up to the patient.

„Oh, if I had know beautiful doctors like that worked here, I would have went here before." The patient greeted her when she lifted the curtain. April looked at the bald green eyed man in his mid forties. „You don't really need to check on me, my wife insisted, but it's only been a small accident, I'm not even bruised"

„What happened?" April asked while looking at the basic history a med student had taken down.

„I made a total fool out of myself…" he laughed.

„Yeah, but that usually doesn't make you end up in an ER." April laughed and kept ‚because I'd be here a lot otherwise' to herself.

„Oh, I was a little clumsy and fell down the stairs. It's nothing serious, my wife insisted I'd go and let me get checked out and on way here..." The man explained, but April interrupted him. „Well, you have a lacaration and need stitches, but let me check your airway and …." April said when she was interrupted by Jackson who hd just walked into the ER. His lips had tasted good for a second. As she realized that she was fading off into a daydream she turned her attention back to the patient. „you should be fine, you'll be back home by tonight…" she concluded.

„April, pity your last name isn't calender." The man joked.

„you are funny." April tried to compliment the patient.

„So I need a few stitches and I'll be out of here?" The guy asked.

„Yes, I guess" April smiled „I'll see when I find someone who can do this."

* * *

The sound of his pager woke Derek up. He was still in the on call room and it had been a dream. He was relieved to find out that his son and his wife were probably fine. This day was a nightmare, but not as grueling as the one he had just had. He ran his fingers through his hair and got up. His wife had been lying to him, but his son was still healthy. He was paged to the ER. There would be an ambulance with a head trauma coming in in a few minutes.  
He saw that Jackson was waiting for him at the patient's gurney. "Avery, what have we got?" he wondered approaching the bed.  
"Infant, head trauma, direct impact. His mom is in the next ambulance." Jackson told him while he pushed the gurney through the crowded ER.  
Derek froze. No this couldn't be happening. "Where is Dr. Nelson?" he stammered and stood still while Jackson approached the elevator.  
"Are you okay, Dr. Shepherd?" the resident wondered. Derek looked at him.  
"Yes" he nodded, took a breath and continued to stammer. His worst nightmare was coming true. His wife would be in the next ambulance. His wife and his son would die in the hospital tonight. A week ago they had been a happy family and now everything was in ruins. "Can I look at him? I need to see him before… "  
"It's a girl." Jackson stated and a spring of relief gushed from Derek's heart. Meredith and Christopher were fine. Meredith was messed up and had screwed up priorities, but she was safe wherever she was. While they waited for the elevator to ascend to the OR floor he wondered how messed up it was that he was relieved that it was this girl on his table.  
"Alright, her pupils are blown, we have to get her into the OR immediately. No time for a CT, get her in there immediately. Tell them to prep everything." He shouted while they went into the scrub room to sterilize themselves before walking into the OR. "It's a beautiful day to save lives. Let's go."

* * *

George was surprised when he opened his door. "They took Zola away and Derek and I had a huge fight. Can I stay here for a few days?" Meredith asked. She was carrying both Christopher and a bag.  
"Sure, come in. My house is your house" George said.  
Meredith came in and looked at the crib in the bed room with a crying baby "What's Sofia doing here? You brought a crib."  
"It's Callie's crib, but she's still in the hospital and she's refusing to see her, she says that all she's going to do is to damage and Callie's dad said that I'm the worst thing that ever happened to her." George said „Arizona asked me to look after her"  
„It's my fault. I should have listened to the psychologist and Bailey." Meredith said and sat down on the couch.  
„No, Callie isn't herself, she's afraid that she'll hurt Sofia no matter what she's doing and Sofia got discharged and Arizona is on call, so I'm taking her. But honestly, I'm kind of glad that you are here because I don't have a clue what I'm doing and right now she's crying and I don't have a clue." George said.  
"Just give her to me for a second." Meredith said and started to craddle her. To George it seemed like Meredith had just performed a magic trick. Sofia was quiet and calm within a few minutes.

"How did you do that?" George whispered as he looked at Meredith who held Sofia.  
"I'm a mom." Meredith put her back down to bed.  
"You are a great mom." George said.  
"My husband strongly disagrees right now." Meredith sighed „I should have told him about the suspension and about what happened. I mean I tried to, but I couldn't and now I'm here hiding instead of talking to him or being yelled at. Can I use your laptop? I have to do a bit of research and find a new job."  
"Sure. You'll find me in my bed. You can sleep on the couch." George said. Two minutes later he was paged to the hospital.

* * *

The ER got busier by the minute. Twenty minutes ago it had been empty, but now ambulances brought in new patients by the minute

„Another one? Where are all those people coming from?" George wondered.  
„Seattle Pride festival. Some idiot drove into the crowd." Owen said.  
„Seriously? Who does that? Why would you drive into a crowd?" George wondered.  
„I don't know O'Malley, we have to get him into the OR asap." Owen said when he assessed the wounds of a patient. „His abdomen is rigid and the ultrasounds revealed free fluid." Looking at his pager he yelled „April, head on collision, coming in in 5"

„I have a patient" April said. She was still talking to the patient that had been admitted prior to the big crash.

„No, come on." Owen insisted „He's stable, isn't he?"

„I have to stitch him up, but yeah" April admitted.

„It's fine honey, I can wait a few minutes." The man said.

Two hours later April returned to finish her work. She pulled back the curtain and started to talk without really looking at the patient who seemed to be asleep „Oh, thank you, you won't believe how crazy the ER can get so crazy and with every patient there is so much paper work and…" she said. When he didn't react April realized that something was wrong. „Oh my… page neuro, his pupils are blown"

* * *

There was a knock on the door. Meredith opened the door hoping it was Derek, but she saw an Asian looking woman in front of her. „Cristina Oh my God, what are you doing here? What the hell happened? Come in here."

„George said you ambushed him." Cristina laughed „Well, he didn't say ambush, but he said you needed someone to talk"

„You look like shit." Meredith smiled and hugged Cristina.

„Well aren't you friendly today." Cristina laughed and looked at Meredith with a hint of disgust on her face „You have baby vomit all over your shirt."

„What happened? Why do you show up here in the middle of the night looking like that?" Meredith wondered. Cristina was wearing a ball gown and her hair was messed up.

„I walked here from the restaurant. Owen. He …" she explained.

„Is it his PTSD? Did he freak out while he was afraid?" Meredith interrupted her.

„No" Cristina sighed „he said all I can think of is surgery and I don't think I think about surgery all the time, but my pager keeps going off and I bet him 100 quid I wouldn't answer it until my next regular shift. This sucks."

„We can hide here forever I'm sure George won't mind. We can stay here and hide from our problems forever. You can sleep on the couch, George is doing the night shift anyway. I'll sleep next to Sofia and Christopher." Meredith smiled.

„How often do you check on her?" Cristina asked when she looked at Sofia.

„Constantly, she's so tiny. Christopher has never been so tiny. It's a miracle she survived." Meredith said and stood next to Cristina who was standing next to the crib.

„She's tough – like Callie." Cristina said and admitted to a fear she had never voiced before „I'm afraid to sleep next to Owen again. He's right about surgery – and I think it's going to destroy him."

„I'm afraid I'll never sleep next to Derek again." Meredith said „and I'm afraid it's going to destroy me"

„He's not the sun, Mer. You are?" Cristina said, but after a moment of silence she added „How do you go on if your whole world has been turned around? I mean look at George, one minute he's the sperm donor and the next he is taking care of that kid"

* * *

„Wow, he's pretty shacked up." George said when Owen and he finally scrubbed out. It had been a six hour procedure.  
„He was. If he makes it through the night, he's going to survive. Good work O'Malley, trauma could be your thing." Owen said  
„Do you think so?" George wondered.  
„Yeah, all those hours in the training lab really pay off and trauma is a very rewarding specialty. You save the people who have just gone through one of the worst experiences of their lives and you give them another chance." Owen explained. „It makes you feel good about one thing"

„Is that the reason you went to Iraq?" George asked.

„No, everything here was getting too much and there I got to do the one thing I was good at." Owen said.

* * *

Two hours after her arrival Cristina walked into George's bed room „I can't sleep." Meredith admitted as she looked up from her book.

„Neither can I" Cristina nodded „I keep thinking about surgery and Owen said that it's all I ever think about. What are you going to do, Mer? I mean you can't do your residency at a bogust hospital in the outskirts."

„I'll apply for a mid semester transfer. If I don't get one I'll just focus on being a mom." Meredith smiled.

„A very single mom. You can't do that Mer. They have to give you your job back." Cristina said „Lexie talked to Dr. Webber"

„They won't Cristina. I overstepped and now I have to face the consequences. Richard blames me for what my mom did to him." Meredith said „He's not going to give me my job back. But I kind of like it, staying at home, Christopher and I went to the park today. He likes the park and I like the other moms."

„You have this perky smile. You hated them." Cristina smiled and looked at Meredith trying to observe her facial reaction.

„YEAH" Meredith admitted „they were perky and happy and I feel dark and twisty"

„Bitches!" Cristina exclaimed „I like George's bed. George's bed is nice. Nice and comfy. No men in it. It's the perfect bed."

„Christopher is in it." Meredith reminded her.

„He's a baby." Cristina said it doesn't count."

„A beautiful baby" Meredith replied and turned to Christopher who was sound asleep „You are the only man I'm totally infactuated with, Christopher."

„Man, I hope I never have kids. You've gone soft. Shepherd ruined you." Cristina noted.

„I ruined me. This time." Meredith said

„You wanted to help a friend." Cristina excused Meredith's motivation

„And ruined my career in the process. Who knows whether I'll even get an interview if Richard tells them I was fired." Meredith said.

„You are the daughter of THE Ellis Grey." Cristina said „And pretty boy talked to God, he wants you"

„I don't want to get interviews because of her and I want to stay here because I want all of this to go away. I just want to go home and be with my husband who isn't talking to me and told me to get the hell out. I want to turn back time." Meredith smiled „I don't want to go to Boston. It's what mom did, she just ran away when things got tough"

„Always have the strength to carry on, Mer!" Cristina said „I know you can do it. You can't turn back time, but you can keep getting up every day. At some point everything will be fine. Just look at Owen and me." Cristina tried to cheer her up „Christ, I should stop reading magazines, not thinking about surgery all the time ruins me"

* * *

Derek was examining the patient he had been paged to. It had been a horrible night with three brain dead patients so far and it seemed like he'd have to add a fourth to the list„There's nothing you can do?" April asked.

„There would have been something if you had paged me two hours ago Kepner." He yelled.

„He's going to die?" April wondered.

„Well, you could hope for fairytales and magic, but he's probably brain dead. Do the test and monitor him!" Derek said „I see he has signed a …"

„What am I going to tell the family? I mean it's… it's my fault. I killed a patient." April stated.

„Call the family, tell them to come to the hospital, don't tell them you killed him, go over the process and ask them for organ donation." Derek said and handed over the chart back to her.

„He hasn't put down a name and he signed the form before…" April said.

„In that case, call UNOS and tell them…" Derek tried to continue to explain the process, but April interrupted him „But I have to… it was my fault. I wasn't a good enough doctor. I didn't do my job. It was my job to keep him alive and I couldn't do it – he was fine when he came in."

„Call UNOS and stay with the patient. It's 24 hours until we confirm brain death." Derek said.

* * *

Meredith held Sofia's car seat when she walked along the hospital halls. „Well, I see you moved on to the next baby quickly" Derek noted when he looked at both of them. Immediately after finishing the sentence he sped up and walked away. Meredith looked up to the sky and turned around. „Derek. You have… don't walk away. Please listen to me. I want to talk to you." Meredith begged.

„You know when you should have talked to me." Derek yelled at her „That day when you got suspended, before you any of the rest of it, that's when you should have explained. I have a surgery right now. Good bye."

„Derek." Meredith said quietly while Derek walked into the scrub room.

After Derek had walked away Meredith walked to Callie's room. „I brought a visitor. Hope you are up for it."  
„Oh my god, take her away. I can't. Take her away! I don't want to see her." Callie said „I'm not good for her"  
„It's alright, you don't have to hold her if you don't want to." Meredith smiled.  
„I'm sorry you got fired." Callie said. It was the first time they were talking since Callie had found out.  
„You have nothing to be sorry for" Meredith said „It was my decision"

„How is she? How was her first night outside the hospital?" Arizona asked excited when she walked in „George told me you'd come."  
„She didn't sleep much until I downloaded the sound of a heart monitor, but after that she was fine. She had her bottle." Meredith smiled.  
„That's good. Can I hold her?" Callie asked with a lot of hesitation.  
„She's your daughter. You don't have to ask me." Meredith said and began to unbelt Sofia. „Hold on, Sofia, your mommy wants to hold you."  
„She's beautiful." Callie said when Meredith put her onto Callie's breast. She was still in physical therapy. „Meredith, I know you hate all that crap, but George said you were the one that convinced the others to bring Callie to Sofia, so I'd like you to be our maid of honor." Arizona said while she looked at Sofia and Callie.  
„Do you remember what happened at the last wedding I attended as maid of honor and what's going on in my life right now?" Meredith asked.  
„Hold on what happened? Arizona asked. Apparently not everyone at the hospital had found out about her suspension yet, but that was about to change „Grey, what are you doing here?" Dr. Bailey asked when she came in „It's your fault I had to stay the night, can't trust my patients with those idiots"  
„She brought over Sofia so we could see her" Arizona smiled „But what do you mean?"  
„And the last time she did that it got her fired."Bailey said „Because the board doesn't like critical care patients to be wheeled around the hospital."  
„I can talk to somebody, if you want to. Do you want me to talk to someone?" Callie offered again.  
„Well, Grey decided to throw herself under the bus for everyone and there's nothing we can do about that. Even though I'm sure she hasn't done this by herself." Bailey said. „Don't play the hero unless you are Grey."

* * *

I have looked at the result. I have looked at them a hundred times. "You are going to die" It's something I tell my patients every day, but it's different if you have to face a horrible situation and realize there's nothing you can do to change it. I look at the scan like I did every day for the past seven days. I'm going to die. I'm a dead man walking The cancer is going to eat me alive. Liver cancer! It's a painful death. I'm going to die. My son is going to grow up without knowing his dad. He will never know what it's like to go fishing with me, he will never know. Meredith is going to raise him on her own. I will die a painful death. Radiation won't help, chemo will make me miserable and surgery is no option for this kind of tumor. I'm 44 years old and I'm going to die.

* * *

„What are you doing here?" Lexie asked her sister when she saw her in the cafeteria.  
„Derek hasn't been home. I went to get a few clean shirts this morning. I have to talk to him. But I don't know where he is." Meredith said „and he walked away when I brought Sofia to see Callie.  
„Do you want me to talk to him?" Lexie asked her. It would be easy to bring it up in the OR.  
„No, Lexie, this isn't your problem. We fight and it's my fault. It's my fault they took Zola away. It's my fault I lost my job. I think it's my fault that Callie doesn't want to see Sofia. It's all my fault. He has every right to be mad, but I just wish he'd be more supportive right now." Meredith said.  
„You know that you could just tell Webber what happened…" Lexie offered another possibility to resolve the problem.  
„No, Lexie, they'd fire all of you. How was the morbidity and mortality today?" Meredith wondered.  
„Lots of trauma, hardly anything else. It's not surprising that a guy who has been hit by a semi died last week." Lexie said.  
„Well, as long as we did our best, I guess that's all we could ask for. Has Derek been there?" Meredith looked at Lexie.  
„Yes." Lexie nodded „If you want to talk to him. We had massive trauma coming in. You might want to drive to the house now. He's probably tired, but he's going to be happy seeing Christopher"

* * *

Meredith was sitting on George's bed looking at Sofia Her breast moved up and down while she slept. „You are still here?" George wondered when he came in the following morning.

„I have nowhere to go." Meredith said.

„You have a house, two houses actually." George reminded her. „You could live there."

„I can't go there. I screwed up and Derek, he isn't talking to me. Oh god, how could I ever let everything get so far?" Meredith wondered. George sat down next to her.

„We should have just said that …" he began.

„No, you shouldn't have, it was my idea. Sofia has been doing well today, she's a gorgeous baby."

George looked at her and for a minute neither of them said a word until George nodded. „She really is."

„Have you ever thought about what you would do if you could hit a refresh button? What would happen if you could get away, start over, start fresh – somewhere else?" Meredith wondered „Mom did it."

„I wondered if dad would have died if I had went to San Diego." George admitted „Christ, none of those crappy things would have happened if I had accepted the internship position there. But no, I chose to stay with my family… and all I did was to screw up."

„You didn't screw up. You made things right with Callie, you've …What's the matter?" Meredith asked.

„April paged me 911" George said after looking at his pager.

* * *

„You put quite a predicament on me, Dr. Webber. What is it about this girl that made you go all the way?" Bailey asked with a hint of anger in her voice.

Dr. Webber looked up from the note he had been reading „What are you talking about?"

„Meredith Grey." Dr. Bailey said those to words with so much emphasis that one might have considered that she was an important person „The only resident that I fully trust in my OR. When I look at Kepner and other idiotic interns running around the ER like headless chickens, I start to miss Izzie Stevens. That girl might have cut LVAD wires, but she was a decent surgeon. You fired the only resident I trusted with my patients."

„She deserved to be fired for what she did" Dr. Webber looked at the note again.

„She deserved to be punished, but she didn't deserve to be fired and now I don't get to go home because I can't leave my patients in the hands of those idiots, Karev is on peds, O'Malley is on trauma, Yang has been on cardio ever since I can think and Avery, I don't know what Avery is doing" Miranda Bailey ranted. „I want her back"

„Well, maybe you could teach Avery or what about Lexie Grey?" Dr. Webber suggested „We have a lot of capable residents who don't bend the rules all the time"

„Lexie Grey is on Dr. Shepherd's service for now. Even though I don't know how healthy that is. I'm not taking Kepner, Chief and Avery, he has to figure out what he wants to do first"

* * *

„I killed a patient and there's nobody coming and medical students are going to cut him open because he donated his body for science. I killed him." April cried into George's arms.

„You didn't." George said.

„I did. I didn't check his pupilar reaction. I didn't check and I should have and now he's going to die. He'll die because I made a mistake and he was a nice guy, he was friendly and kind and it's my fault he's going to die. I don't want to die and I don't want to lose another patient. There's got to be more. I mean we didn't go through all of those years of high school, college, med school, intership and residency just to stay in the walls of this hospital all the time. I mean all we do is to justify why we did this procedure or that test and not the slightly less expensive one. I want to go back to just saving a patient. I filled out his chart when he died. If I hadn't been so busy, I would have noticed something is wrong with him." April rambled.

„Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you had chosen another hospital for your residency? Or what would happen if you just got up and left?" George wondered „I do, I do it ever since dad died and I got married and divorced and the merger and Izzie's death and… Callie's accident and life is so screwed up"

„Yeah, to find out that there's more to life and to actually help people." April nodded „I feel like all we are doing ever since the merger is to produce a profit. Money was never important at Mercy West."

„So what are we going to do about Mer?" George wondered „I mean, we can't… she's been a friend to all of us…and she's been there, she's always been there."

„I could talk to them, I'm probably going to get fired anyway too. I can tell them it's…" April begann but didn't finish. It wasn't her fault, unlike tonight it hadn't been her fault.

* * *

"They offered me the job, Derek! I'm leaving. I'm leaving you and I'm leaving Seattle" I hear Meredith shout towards me. We are standing in front of the hospital and it's raining. I freeze and I feel the rain drops on my face. I watch as she leaves, I see how the memory of her fades away. She drives away, she takes Christopher away. I'm alone. I'm all alone.  
"Don't do this to me" I scream as her car leaves the parking lot, but I know that she can't hear me. I watch her leave and eventually the car disappears. My wife has vanished from my world. My wife and my child left.

* * *

Lexie and Alex were sitting on the couch in the living room „We have to tell Webber what happened!" Lexie said. She missed her sister and it was a weird feeling not to be able to talk to her.

„Lexie, look at me, do you think this is what Meredith would want?" Alex asked. He knew that it would be the wise decision, but it wasn't what Meredith had insisted on.

„This is killing her. Derek hasn't talked to her since he found out." Lexie said „She doesn't want to miss him because it feels like she's missing the oxygen in the air when she breathes, it feels like she misses the way he holds the scalpell or the way he smirks when he looks at your ass…"

„You are not talking about Meredith here. That last part wasn't about Shepherd" Alex said

„No, I'm not" Lexie said „I miss Dr. Sloan and I don't even know why and now Meredith and Derek. I don't want them to fall apart, I just want proof that one of Thatcher's kids can be happy because Molly, she's has DBT and is in the hospital. I just want someone to make it better."  
„I can make it better, Lexie." Alex said and his lips moved closer to hers.

„Make it better, Alex." Lexie said and leaned into the kiss.

* * *

„Dr. Bailey, you were right. It was personal." Richard sat down next to her on a bench in front of the hospital. It had been a long day for both of them and it was dark outside.

„What was personal?" Bailey looked up from the newspaper.

„The reason I fired Meredith Grey." Richard said and Bailey opened her mouth saying nothing. Never in all the time she knew Richard had he acted on personal motived „Ellis had a child." He explained.

„Meredith, I know." Bailey said.

„No, another one. She was pregnant when she left Seattle and it was mine. Ellis left, I was miserable and after 25 years I find out that my wife knew about the affair all along." Richard said.

„So, what has Meredith Grey done? What's her part in the story?" Bailey asked.

„She was a child –and the reason I didn't run off with Ellis" Richard said „And now, she's here and she looks like Ellis and I don't…"

„Don't tell me you really said those words Dr. Webber. Don't tell me you fired her because she reminds you of your past with her mother. Cause that'd be the most stupid thing I ever heard." Bailey said „Meredith Grey is one of the best residents on the programme. Make them hire her back"

* * *

 _There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't cause I thought because I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone, and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love. And then you don't have it. What if you like it? And lean on it? What if you shape your life around it? And then... it falls apart. Can you even survive that kind of pain? Loosing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is – death ends. This? It could go on forever._

* * *

Meredith grabbed her key. She looked at it before she put it into the lock. She knew Derek would be home because the lights were on. She turned the key and opened the door. Derek was standing next to the sofa and looked at her „Hey, Lexie told me I'd find you here." Meredith smiled and showed him a bag with take out food „I brought food."  
„Don't you think I can take care of that myself?" Derek snapped.  
„I wanted to try." Meredith said and put down the food on the kitchen top. She looked at him and he looked away. She was waiting for an answer after looking at him for a while he said „Well, it won't make up for the fact that Zola was taken away from us because of you."  
„Wow." Meredith said quietly and look down. „Chris is here, I'll go up to the guest room. You know that even though they took away Zola, he's still your son."  
„You don't have to remind me of that." Derek yelled. „He's the…"  
Suddenly the word "Pepperoni" interrupted their conversation. Their heads turned and they heard an innocent giggle.  
„Oh my god" Meredith turned her head and looked at Christopher who waved at her.  
„He just said his first word" Derek said with a smile on his face. He looked at Meredith and wondered „It was his first word, wasn't it? Given the fact that you kept him from me most of the time I have to ask"  
Meredith closed her eyes she wanted to yell, but with Christopher in the room she couldn't go American Psycho on him. „It was and I did not keep him from you. You were working. You knew were I was."  
„Meredith, why is his first word 'pepperoni' don't tell me you fed him pepperoni pizza?" Derek got mad. He knew that she loved food that could be bought in paper boxes.  
„I did not, Derek, You don't feed that to a one year old. I'm not irresponsible." Meredith said.  
„I beg to differ." Derek said and turned around „You were fired"  
„I made a few calls today. I applied for open residency spots at different hospitals. I just wanted to let you know." Meredith said.  
„Where at?" Derek wondered.  
„Places" Meredith said and paused. She knew that this would mean another blow to their relationshop „L.A., Florida, Boston, New York, Cleveland. I tried to find something close by, but…"  
„Are you going to take Christopher?" Derek wondered „because I'll fight you for custody, I want to be in my son's life"  
„Custody? Are we talking about what I think we are talking about? Derek, we can fix this, I can fix this!" Meredith tried to encourage him. If it wasn't for her, this could have been one of the happiest moment of their lives, but she had lied to him and he was refusing her a chance to fix the mess she had made. „Yes. I think so. If I'm going I'm going to take Christopher. But I'm not going to keep him from you. You can see him anytime you want." Meredith said.

„How is that going to work? I'm working on one side of the country and my wife and my son are on the other side." Derek ask sarcastically.  
Meredith closed her eyes. Tears were starting to build up „I don't know Derek. But I lost my job and I don't have a choice but to leave Seattle if I want to be a surgeon. But I love you."  
„I don't know how I can love someone like you." Derek said. Meredith felt like someone had stabbed her, but the words that followed made it easier for her to leave „Go, just go. You are just like your mother."


	27. Chapter 27

_A little timejump (1 or 2 weeks) and now you'll see how MerDer move on...hope you are going to enjoy this_

 _Susan: No, Derek is going to be fine. No cancer for him. He's just having nightmares, but he's soon to find out what it means if one of them comes true._

 _Angela: Thank you for your review, I'm glad you enjoy the story._

 _Hasi: It'll take Richard a long time to come around, a very long time. Meredith has a lot of people on her side, but Richard certainly isn't one of them right now._

 _Patsy: Sorry about the confusion, everything from the I perspective were meant to be Derek's dreams. He doesn't have cancer, but Derek and Meredith still have to overcome huge challenges. And as she doesn't have a job in Seattle, she'll go somewhere else. (and Derek's mom is going to appear rather sooner than later)_

 _Kiley: Thanks for the review, I hope this chapter gives you a little hope. You'll be able to see a shift in the perception of the events, but you'll also see that Meredith has to do a few things she'll do in the next ten chapters._

 _Shelley: No divorce and neither Derek nor Mer will have cancer._

 _Cheryl: Hope you are going to enjoy the next chapter. They aren't going to get a divorce, but it's going to take them a while to work through their issues and another while before that to be truly ready to work through them. But if it's love, it'll work out ;)_

 _Darlene: Thanks for staying faithful to the story._

 _Melanie: Derek's not dying and you are right on track with your chapter 25 review_

 _Sara: No, just a dream, Derek's confronted with his worst nightmares, but his worst nightmare is going to come true soon and you'll see how he deals with it._

 _Stephanie: Thank you for your review! Yes, Christopher is the biggest victim in this mess and you are going to find out how much this affects him once the story progresses._

 _Anita: RIght on track, Meredith is going to pack her bags and it's going to be the last Derek sees of her in a while, but her friends are making up for their lack of action in this chapter and so is Derek who is beginning to fight an inner battle._

 _Ellen: Her friends just realized that the Chief meant business, they never expected the consequences to be so severe_

 _Margaret/Theresa/Judy: Thanks for the review!_

* * *

 **Chapter 27**

 _We begin life with few obligations. We pledge allegiance to the flag. We swear to return our library books. But as we get older we take vows, make promises, get burden by commitments, to do no harm, to tell the truth and nothing but, to love, to cherish till death do us part. So we just keep running up the tap 'til we owe everything to everybody and suddenly ... what the._

Derek and Richard were standing next to each other on the bridge that connected the surgical floor with the rest of the hospital. It was the middle of the night and Derek hadn't slept in days. In fact he avoided sleep because as he lay in his bed he was reminded that Meredith wasn't there and it reminded him of everything he had lost. He was suffering through an endless series of nightmares – some more likely to turn into reality than others and a few becoming reality. Cristina had told him that Meredith is looking for work. She would leave him, and he knew he had to let her go in order to save her surgical career. „I don't get what Meredith has been thinking. I don't. I'm having nightmares – horrible nightmares. Meredith is leaving. I keep dreaming of it every night" Derek told Richard as they both overlooked the hospital entrance hall. Richard looked to the ground. Ever since Meredith had been fired he was one of the most hated people in the hospital. Bailey wasn't talking to him, the residents despised him and his head of neurosurgery hadn't been talking to him.  
„Derek, I'm not the person you should talk to." Richard interrupted him. Meredith Grey shouldn't be in his life any longer. He certainly had other people to deal with.  
„I'm not ready to talk to her, I can't. I don't even know if I can be with her right now." Derek said and added something more important after a short moment of hesitation. „– If I could forgive her – if I knew I could forgive her." Derek continued. „I feel so much, but I don't want to this."  
„Take a few days off and think about it. Talk to her, talk to Sloan. I don't care. Don't talk to me. Do whatever it is you do if you are sad." Richard told him and his tone got more harshly when he said „but don't talk to me about your private life"  
„Richard, we used to have a good relationship." Derek reminded him. „Remember the summer visits or coming to my wedding more than a decade ago?" Richard had been his mentor when he had started his internship. They had visited each other and Richard had begged him to come to Seattle for years after he had finished his fellowship.

„That was before you married Meredith Grey, Derek." Richard snapped.

„She didn't do anything to you" Derek told him. It was true, while he was still mad at Meredith for lying to the social worker, he wanted her to continue her career „and I'm afraid she'll leave and Sloan is in L.A. My family is in New York. I'll be alone"  
„Call him." Richard said. „You shouldn't talk to me" Derek wouldn't call Mark again, he had reminded him of their first conversation after Derek had married Meredith. While he was on the way to buy ice cream for her he had told Mark that he had found the person he was going to spend the rest of his life with. Mark had told him that when things got harder, it meant that he had to fight harder. Mark and Addison were fighting.  
„You have to do something. You owe it to her." Derek said reminding Richard of his history with Meredith. They both knew that his decision to break his promise to Ellis had ruined Meredith's childhood.  
„– there's nothing I can do Derek." Richard said bitterly in a tone that was denying any responsibility for what had happened. „I can't give her job back. The board was very clear – they didn't want to see her in the hospital ever again."  
„The board? I talked to Ms. Gilligan and her husband told her that it was you who persuaded the board to take action against her. Cristina told me that she applied to several hospitals on the east coast and she's planning to take our son with her. She's leaving Seattle and she's taking away my son." Derek said. „Isn't it your job to keep the department heads happy? And I'm not happy when she runs away"  
„Like mother like daughter. I wasn't happy when Ellis left either, I got over it" Richard said bitterly.  
„You chose to leave her, Richard, that was on you." Derek told Richard. As his voice got louder a few heads turned and looked at them. „I'm going to resign here if she does. I don't know if I can forgive her, but I want to be close to her. You can tell the board that they'll have to hire a new Chief of neurosurgery. I'm not going to stand by and watch. I need to be in my son's life."  
„Feel free to do so. I won't stop you. But you signed a contract and I won't let you go until the end of your contract."

„That's at the end of Meredith's residency." Derek noted.

„It's the contract you signed" Richard said and walked away.

* * *

Callie walked through her room. It was more than she had been able to do a week ago. She was running up and down her room. It was almost exactly what she had been doing during physical therapy, but this was different. Her father had just talked to her and she was mad „He's dragging me home. Como si fuera una nina perdida, como si yo no pudiera hacer decisiones adultas sober mi vida y who I want to spend it with. I mean es mi vida!" Callie cursed.  
„Well, I-I can see that you're very upset." Arizona said when she was looking at Callie.  
„You paged me, ." George said when he walked into the room with a box in his hand.  
„You're her best friend, and i am at a giant loss right now. Not to mention, the very sick children" Arizona said „I have surgery and I'm running late."  
„Go. I got this." George nodded. He sat down on Callie's bed and put the box onto her nightstand.  
„Stop speaking Spanish. 'Cause I have to go to surgery in a minute too, and I don't speak Spanish. What's the matter?"  
„My dad is taking me home. He's talking to the chief, and he's making me quit my job and quit my relationship, which he has yet to acknowledge even exists." Callie said and sat down next to George. „I'm walking"  
„What, are you 12? Tell him he's crazy." George said. „You are a strong woman, tell him he's crazy."  
„You don't understand. There isn't anything he hasn't done for me, okay? Nothing. He's paid for my college, he's paid for med school. I have a huge trust fund because he doesn't want me to worry about anything but being a great doctor. I mean, the man has done nothing but support me his whole life." Callie said.  
„Well, supporting someone and respecting someone aren't the same thing. You need to tell him that." George smiled „I got you the cheeseburger you wanted from Joe's."  
„-Are you sure about this?" Callie wondered as she unpacked the box. „I mean, I …" she said and stopped.

„Are you okay?" George asked when he watched Callie observing the burger from every possible angle.  
„I feel fine. Oh, french fries. God, I love french fries." She said when she put the burger down and started to eat the fries instead.

* * *

It had been a long shift for all of them and April was happy that she finally got out of the hospital. She had talked to Jackson about her fears and worries for days now and she was growing increasingly uneasy to leave things as they are. Meredith and the dead patient were in her every thought. „I'm not that kind of person, Jackson. I haven't slept in a week and I'm pretty sure God wants me to suffer because" April told him, but Jackson didn't want to hear anything about her patient anymore.

„Don't start like this, April. We all screwed up once or twice. I mean I screwed up that shunt insertion." Jackson said.

„And the patient was fine afterwards." April said „But this patient wasn't and Meredith, we should have talked to Webber. Even when she insisted that we shouldn't."

Lexie who was standing next to Alex whispered „See Alex, yeah, we should have. I'm not the only one that feels guilty"

Alex went forward and told April the first kind words he had ever told her „Kepner, I gorged a patient because I told one of the nurses a wrong dosis, he was an unlikeable jerk, but we all screwed up, it happens to everyone." Every resident had this one patient that died and could have been saved if they hadn't screwed up.

„The family must hate me." April said „And Meredith must hate all of us. Her husband is a total jerk to her because of us and she lost her job because of us"

„Calm down April." Jackson said. „She'll have a job, I talked to my grandfather, he knows the whole story."

„No, I won't. I can't live with myself and I told Dr. Webber that I'm going to leave." April said. All of their heads turned.

„You'll transfer?" Jackson asked in shock. Another resident he had started his internship with was going to leave. He was almost relieved when April replied. „No, I signed up for three months of medical trauma training with the military."

„The military? You want to go to a warzone?" Lexie looked at her in shock. She knew what her sister's husband was dealing with and she was surprised that anyone would choose this for herself.

„That's a great idea, you…" George said.

But Jackson interrupted her „No, no, no, that's not a great could get killed."

„I don't think it's any of your business, Jackson." April said.

„April" Jackson yelled.

Lexie grabbed his arm. „Jackson, she said she wants to do it and it's only three months"

„Thank you, Lexie." April smiled „I'll talk to the board about Meredith before I leave"

* * *

„Are you crazy George? The army?" Meredith said while she sat on the couch in George's appartment. She had just poured herself a glass of red wine and was looking at it while she continued „I think it's stupid George, but I'm not going to talk you out of it because you are an adult. If it's what you want to do, go ahead, enlist. But if I was Derek and you were me and I would probably yelling at me, you, whatever. I'd be mad at you/me."  
George sat down next to her „I won't enlist, I'd be a doctor. A surgeon. I'd continue my training, but I'd have the opportunity to perform most surgeries myself. Hunt told me about it and I think it's great. April will come with me."  
„Did Hunt tell you about his PTSD too?" Meredith wondered. Cristina had told her a lot about it. Sometimes he'd wake up from a nightmare, it would look like he was awake, but while he was screaming hysterically, he was still stuck in his own nightmare. It scared Cristina. „Did he tell you about his dead friends, about the humvees that crash? Cristina told me about that. Do you know what's going to happen to Sofia?"  
„He didn't." George said „Callie is getting better and Arizona is taking care of her. What are you going to do? I mean you are basically unemployed right now." Changing the topic was a good option to avoid having to discuss this further. It just seemed like the ideal thing to do.  
„I'm looking at openings for residency spots across the country. Jackson talked to his grandpa. Mass. Gen. has one, there's one at Mount Sinai and Hopkins has one too and there's a bunch of other hospitals in the middle of nowhere. I'll see what I can get." Meredith smiled.  
„You could sign up too." George said „Maybe they'll give you your job back after three months."  
„I have a child and I want him to grow up with both parents. I'm not going to join the army and I'm not really happy that you are thinking about it. I don't want you to get killed." Meredith said. „Even though having an ocean between me and Richard Webber sounds tempting."  
„You think I'll get killed?" George wondered.  
„No, I didn't say that. But it's a possibility." Meredith said and laughed „Kepner will get killed for sure. If she isn't killed in combat someone is going to shoot her because she's so annoying. You are going to live in a war zone. What is going to happen to Sofia? Look at her, there is a beautiful baby sleeping in the bed next to yours."  
„I'm not the dad, I was the sperm donor, Callie was quite clear about that" George said, but Meredith knew that this what she had thought about it weeks ago – before the accident. „I'm never going to be more than uncle George."  
„She's refusing to be in a room with her right now. She needs a parent." Meredith said.  
„Arizona is her mother." George corrected her.  
„You talked to her dad, but I see it George, you do love her. So when are you going to tell everyone at the hospital about it?" Meredith wondered. „And when did you decide that you were going to change your life?"  
„Today, when April announced that she was leaving." George said. „I'll tell everyone tomorrow. When are you going to tell them?"  
„Once I have heard back from MassGen, Hopkins and Mount Sinai. Jackson's grandpa has almost been exctatic to welcome me." Meredith said, but I'll look at the hospitals. Maybe it'd be good if I go to New York, at least Derek's family could see Christopher once in a while.  
„So you are going to leave Seattle?" George sighed.  
„I don't have much of a choice, have I?" Meredith said „Whereas you have a choice, and for all that it's worth I think you are making the wrong one – Seattle is pretty exciting – you know."

* * *

George walked into Callie's room. He had been doing it every morning just before the start of his shift. She saw that she had been crying and was cursing something in spanish. He looked at her and wondered „What happened?"  
„He, uh gave me an ultimatum. Said if I didn't come home, he'd take away my trust fund he'd cut me off. So I cut him off. I mean, if he can't accept me for who I am I cut him off." Callie cried „My life sucks"  
„Are you okay?" George asked „I can p…"  
„No." Callie insisted firmly „ I mean, yeah. I don't know. I will be."  
„Are you sure? I can page Arizona." George offered.  
„What do you expect me to say? I can't walk like I used to! It takes me 30 minutes to eat yoghurt because my hand eye coordination is so crappy. I can't go back to work any time soon. Do you expect me to be okay? My father sees me like this and he abandons me. He abandons me because I want to marry the person I love who happens to be a woman. My mother doesn't answer my calls and my half sister called me a disgrace. Do I look fine to you?" Callie yelled.  
„I'll go now. I'm sorry." George said. „I have surgery, I'm sorry."  
„Can you call Meredith?" Callie asked and George nodded.

* * *

George was just on time for rounds and avoided to be assigned to any resident. To his disappointment his pager went off and the Chief told him to go to surgery. After everyone had left he walked up to Dr. Bailey. „Dr. Bailey, I need to tell you something." He said.  
Bailey was looking at some charts and told him that it wasn't a good moment, but he continued regardless of what she had told him „No, it'll be quick 'cause I got to get to the OR to scrub in with the Chief. I think you're going to be mad at first, but I'm about to do something important. And, I'm very sure about this decision. And, I think eventually you're going to be proud. But you know, before that you're probably going to be like "What did you do!" I'm... I don't mean to imitate you."  
„You call that quick?" Bailey spat out. She wondered if he'd ever get to the point  
„I joined the Army to be a trauma surgeon, I report for duty tomorrow." George said.  
„YOU DID WHAT?" Bailey had her eyes wide open. „I thought Keppner was stupid, but I can't believe you are as stupid as she is"

* * *

„What's the matter, Callie?" Meredith asked when she walked into Callie's room.

„How do you do it? How can you look at Christopher when he reminds you of Derek every minute of the day." Callie wondered.

„I don't, I keep thinking I can't live without him. Without both of them" Meredith admitted. All she wanted him to say was I'm sorry and for him to ignore the pain she felt. It was a pain that made her hate him love him. His refusal to talk to her made her heart ache and the last words he had told her were so cruel that Meredith knew that he was hurt too.

„You can" Callie said „If I can live with myself after the accident, you can live without him."

„You can't live with Sofia!" Meredith noted.

„and my dad wants to take me home and George is leaving." Callie said. She had a whole portfolio of problems to deal with „I just feel like things weren't meant to be like this every time I look at her. It wasn't supposed to be so hard"

„Sometimes you just wish everything was different. But you can stay, you can tell your dad that you are going to stay where you are and you will be able to deal with the accident." Meredith smiled

„I like that you call it that way, you are the only person who still calls it accident." Callie said „Arizona calls it assault and that makes me feel like a victim everytime she uses that word"

„George is always going to be there for you." Meredith smiled „He's great with Sofia and you are going to be great with her too. Have you considered therapy?"

„I don't need a shrink." Callie dismissed Meredith's suggestion.

„Dr. Wyatt helped me. We made great progress after I drowned. I had family issues and living issues and it helped. You could try it" Meredith smiled. „I have to go."

* * *

„Nothing you say is going to change my mind" George stated when he walked out of the OR and saw a bunch of people standing at the door.  
„Come on, have sense. You can't compare the trauma over there to what we see in the ER. Do you really think you are prepared for it?" Jackson insisted. „George, you can't do this!"  
„I think it's brave, George. My brother died in the field because there haven't been enough trauma surgeons." Arizona said. „I think it's very brave. I'm not going to say that it's stupid because I think it is brave and I believe that people die everywhere."  
Dr. Hunt was sharing Arizona's opinion. He had worked with and lost so many great people, it was a comfort to think that there were people who were going to do their very best to save the soldiers „I think it's great George. You'll be an amazing trauma surgeon one day. It's your decision."  
„Yeah, just go and get yourself killed." Alex told George.  
„Why is nobody trying to talk me out of it?" April wondered.  
„Because we don't care about you." Cristina shrugged. Jackson held on to April's arm and told her something, but she fought off his grip.  
„George, don't go!" Lexie said.  
„You are Bambi. Bambies don't join the army George. Just stay here." Cristina said. „You sort of have a child"  
„O'Malley. You were my favorite. I named my son after you. Don't you get killed over there." Bailey said. „But honestly, I'd rather have you stay here and save some lives in Seattle. There are plenty of lives to save here."  
„George, don't go. It's too dangerous." Lexie added.

At the same time a few meters away April and Jackson were discussing her departure. „April, don't go!" Jackson said „You shouldn't go"  
„I'll be back." April said „but, I have a few things I need to get over."  
„Your parents are not going to like it. I'm going to call your mother." Jackson threatened her. „April, you mean a lot to me"

Teddy Altman took George and April away into a separate room „Both of you are still very young, so I'm going to say a few words because I know what will wait for you. O'Malley. I think you should wait. Don't make a hasty decision. Have you talked to your family?"  
„No." George admitted.  
„I haven't called them either." April said.  
„Go and tell your moms first. Before you commit to anything" Teddy said „See what she says about this. It's a tremendous opportunity, but be sure that going to Iraq is really what you want. Owen isn't the same since everyone on his convoy died but him. It changes you and in two years there are still going to be people to save. You will be a better trained doctor and maybe you are going to have another perspective on life."  
„Why did you decide to join the army?" George wondered.  
„My best friend died in the second tower. 9/11 changed everything for me." Teddy said „It changed everything for everyone. Why do you want to go?"  
„I just want to. My best friend died and I want to save someone." George said.  
„Are you sure you are not running away?" Teddy wondered „Listen to your heart, if it tells you you are running, you should stop."  
„Thank you, Dr. Altman" George nodded.

* * *

Meredith and Alex were sitting on a bench in the harbour with a bottle of tequila wrapped in a brown paper bag Alex still felt guilty because he hadn't done anything about Meredith's suspension. „O'Malley is going to join the army" Alex said when he sat down next to Meredith „You are leaving, Kepner is leaving, It feels like everyone is leaving."  
„I know. I'm not sure if he's really going to go through with it" Meredith said.  
„And you don't try to make him change his mind?" Alex said.  
„I tried, but ultimately it's his decision and I'm going to leave anyway." Meredith smiled. „And I know what it's like if people are questioning your decisions."  
„You are going to leave? For real?" Alex wondered. Cristina had told him that she was considering the possibility, but he hadn't expected that those thoughts were actually coming to frution. „I always hoped that they'd hire you back. Bailey and Shepherd and Kepner have been petitioning the board."  
„I have no job and a husband who doesn't want to see me." Meredith obviously didn't know that Derek had talked to half of the board members since the start of the week, Alex thought to himself, but kept listening to what Meredith was telling him „He basically told me that I'm the most horrible person in the universe. There's nothing that keeps me here." Meredith said, even though she knew she was wrong, she had friends in Seattle, friends she had grown very close to „I applied to open residency spots all over the country."  
„Izzie said something like that and you know she was wrong and you are wrong. Your friends are here and Shepherd is going to talk to you again. O'Malley is a different story though. Why would he want to join the army?" Alex wondered.  
„They have a good program and they are going to cover his mom's health insurance." Meredith said. She knew George's mom wasn't well. „He can feel that sense of accomplishment and he gets to save the lives of people who are willing to give their lives for their country."  
„Are you taking drugs? O'Malley is going to get killed there. He's not the kind of person that survives that sort of thing." Alex said „We lost Izzie, we shouldn't lose anyone else and we shouldn't lose you."  
„Why? He kicks ass in trauma. Have you seen him? He really does, it's his thing." Meredith smiled „I don't think he'll die and I'm just moving across the country"  
„Do you think peds is lame?" Alex wondered.  
„Why would I think that?" Meredith wondered. She knew how invested Alex was with each and every child.  
„I don't know. It feels like this sometimes." Alex said. „Trauma feels hardcore, a bowel resection and terminally sick kids don't feel as hardcore"  
„You are good at what you are doing. You are saving kids, that's enough Alex." Meredith smiled.  
„Yeah, but everyone is doing something. Yang is doing one fancy cardio procedure with Altman, O'Malley wants to join the army." Alex listed what his friends were doing „I don't have a next step"  
„I got fired." Meredith smiled as she realized she was trying to cheer him up by reminding him of her own plight. „And you are a kickass peds resident"  
„Sorry." Alex sighed „We should have stopped the board, but ever since Izzie I've been so caught up with myself"  
„You organized the whole Africa thing. Talk to Webber, maybe you can go there for a few weeks." Meredith suggested „You could get a lot of OR hours out of it."  
„That's actually an amazing idea." Alex said  
„I know, I'm kind of great." Meredith smiled. It was the first time in weeks that she felt that way.

„Mer, if you need someone to talk to, call me" Alex smiled „If things suck in Boston, you can call me, it doesn't matter if it's 2.00 am, just dial my number"

* * *

Cristina and Derek were standing in the OR together. He was wearing his ferryboat scrub cap. Cristina had noticed that he was wearing it for ten straight days now. Derek stood on the opposite side of the table and looked at the exposed spine waiting for the orthopedic surgeon to arrive.

„I know she has to go, I know she has to be a doctor, you can't waste all this training. She's going to be an amazing surgeon and I'll miss her." Derek said „I'll miss her."

„You want her back?" Cristina looked up and looked into his blue eyes. Her voice was firm and usually it was an easy yes or no question, but Derek was still unsure whether it was yes or no.

„You can miss something and not want it back, we've been trouble ever since we met. We started out this way" Derek said „Maybe it's good that…"

„You lost Zola?" Cristina asked „That she's crying a lot, that… That she wants to run away and wants to raise your son on the other side of the country? Nothing about this is good. I never wanted to have kids, but this isn't good"

„I can live without her." Derek said. „It'll be hard, but I can live without her." When Derek said it, Cristina was sure that he was just trying to persuade himself. She knew that despite trying to get over her, he love her way too much to ever get over her.

* * *

Carlos and George were sitting on opposite sides of the bed. George looked at Callie's dad. „Mr. Torres, I'm glad you came, but she's a grown woman. Callie needs all the support she might get" George confessed to his father in law. „but she needs her friends and she needs Arizona"

„Someone needs to look after her while Callie is in that situation." Carlos stated without looking at George. „Neither of you has the money or the time to do it, it's better if she comes with me"

„I'm glad you stuck around, Sir." George said „We were afraid you might leave when you found out she was getting married to a woman, but this is Callie's life and she loves Arizona, you can't change the way she feels about her"

Carlos laughed and shook his head „You didn't O'Malley stick around. In fact you are the worst thing that ever happened to my daughter and it'd be better if you just left and would her carry on with whatever it is that she calls her life nowadays. You are not man enough to be a father to anyone. You better grow a pair of balls." George didn't know how to react. Callie starred at her father for a moment.

„Shut up, dad, I don't want you to go, George." Callie yelled „I don't want you to get killed. Because let's face it, people like you do get killed. I want Sophia to grow up knowing who her biological father is, I know you can take care of her and a plate in the cemetery is not going to do that. Our marriage didn't last, but we got married for all the wrong reasons and for what it's worth I do think that you are a good guy and a great father. And dad, I don't want to leave Seattle."  
„Callie, your dad hates me." George yelled.

„Right now, my dad hates me" Callie told George and her father looked offended „he thinks being bisexual is some sort of… I really need someone I can trust to look after he."

„Do you want me to go?" Carlos asked.

„You have to go if you can't accept my relationship" Callie said „I love Arizona." Callie's father nodded „I guess I have to leave. Calliope, just remember that your mom and I are always going to love you"

* * *

To say a final farewell to Meredith they all met in the bar. They saw the usual crowd and the Chief was eying the group suspicously. Meredith looked at her shot glas and while alcohol had always helped her to forget about the fights with her mother, it didn't seem to help now. As much as she tried to forget about Derek, it just didn't work. Every single shot made her think about him even more „I know a lot about Tequila Joe. I could totally be a bartender." Meredith told Jackson and Joe after her 5th shot of tequila. The two man looked at her and smiled. Every other woman would have been rotten drunk at this stage, but Meredith was still relatively fine even though Jackson had noticed that she got a little bit whiny after the 3rd.  
„I bet you could." Jackson laughed and took another sip of his scotch.  
„So what are you going to do, Mer?" Alex wondered.  
„I have interviews in Boston and New York, apparently the Shepherd-Grey method opens a few doors at good teaching hospitals and the article Jackson and I published did help too." Meredith said „and Jackson put in a good word for me."  
„Nepotism helps" Cristina added.  
„Nepotism is for the weak." Meredith and Jackson said at the same time, looked at each other and laughed.  
„What does Shepherd say about this?" Alex wondered.  
„He doesn't know. He still doesn't talk to me or listen…" Meredith said. She knew that she had to tell him.  
„Are you going to tell him?" Cristina wondered „I mean you should, he'd be surprised if he tries to pick up Christopher from daycare one evening and he isn't there."  
„He isn't talking to me. Everytime I try to talk to him he's running away." Meredith said.  
„Try elevators, it's sort of his thing" Cristina joked

„but it works." Meredith said and got up.

* * *

 _The thing about being a surgeon, everybody wants a piece of you. We take one little oath, and suddenly we're drowning in obligations. To our patients, to our colleagues, to medicine itself. So we do what any sane person would do. We run like hell from our promises, hoping they'll be forgotten. But sooner or later, they always catch up. And sometimes you find the obligation you dread the most isn't worth running from at all._

* * *

Meredith looked at Derek. For the first time in weeks they were alone. Being trapped in an elevator wasn't something they were totally unaccustomed to. Their first kiss inside this hospital had happened inside this elevator. Meredith looked at Derek and tried to open her mouth. She meant to say how sorry she was, but he was faster „I can't believe you did this to me!" Derek told Meredith.

„I did this to you?" Meredith asked and breathed in heavily „I didn't do anything to you! You're not talking to me! You've been ignoring me and I didn't even get a chance to explain!"

„You don't need to explain! I know what happened! It's been just another stupid thing you did! You screw up but you never face the consequences." Derek yelled „You apply to another hospital and you get one of mommy's old friends to create a spot for you."

Meredith looked at Derek and asked „Who told you?" Not too many people in the hospital knew that she had applied at other hospitals.

„That's the thing Meredith, it should have been you who told me." Derek said. „You don't talk to me"

„I just did, Derek. I didn't want to apply for a mid semester transfer, I was hoping all of this would resolve itself, but it doesn't and you aren't talking to me and when you are, you say all those nasty things." She said „I'm sorry."

„I should have been the first person you told." Derek said. „You should have considered my feelings before making a decision like that"

„You have been running away from me. When would I have gotten a chance to talk to you?" Meredith wondered. „Well, I could have trapped you in an elevator because that's what you do! Have you ever considered my feelings since they took Zola away? It was me who got fired, not you. It's me who has to leave all her friends behind, not you."

„I keep having nightmares Meredith, but you are my worst!" Derek yelled „This isn't about you, Meredith"

„Wow, I love you Derek. And I thought you…" Meredith screamed with tears in her eyes.

„I can't live with someone who doesn't talk to me when it's important." Derek said.

„Goodbye Derek, I'm leaving tomorrow and you are never going to have to talk to me again." Meredith said „Hope that makes it easier on you."


	28. Chapter 28

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you had a lot of fun and a few nice days with family and friends! Thank you for your reviews!

Patsy: You are on to something!

Grey's Stark: I don't like this version of Derek either, he's going to rise soon though

Sara: Christopher won't get hurt, no cancer for him. He'll be emotionally affected by what Meredith and Derek are going through, but he won't be sick.

Cheryl: No, Christopher will be fine.

Hasi2012: Derek knows more about Meredith's plans than she told him, that's the reason he brought it up again.

Guest: Rude awakenings ahead for sure. Thanks for your review!

Melanie: You might be right about some of the things you said about Richard.

* * *

Chapter 28

 _Even good marriages fail. One minute you're standing on solid ground, the next minute- you're not. And there're always two versions. Yours, and theirs. The both versions start the same way though. The both start with two people falling in love. You think yours is the one that's going to make it. So it always comes as a shock. The moment you realize it's over. One minute you're standing on solid ground, the next minute, you're not._

* * *

This had been the second flight from Seattle to Boston Meredith had ever been on. What an odd turn of events Meredith thought to herself. She was running away and Derek had no clue where she was. It was just her and Christopher now. The boy had been an angel. He had slept during the entire flight which Meredith was grateful for and he had been very pleasant when Meredith had left him with her old babysitter. Even though she was surprised that the woman was still living on Erie Street, a few blocks away from the MIT campus. It was the street Ellis had lived with Meredith at before they had moved into a house on the nicer side of town.

After the taxi had driven her across the Charles River and dropped her off in front of the hospital she stood there and looked at the face of the building. Meredith was standing in front of the surgical wing of . She knew every corner of this hospital and had spend more time in the OR gallery of this hospital than she had at Seattle Grace. She had seen her first whipple here and when she was 12 she had talked one of the interns through an appendectomy while her mother performed another surgery in an other OR and now she was standing here in a situation she had never imagined. She had left Seattle after the love of her life had denied her his love. She was just like her mother she thought. Ellis had been pregnant when they left. It was said pregnancy that had caused the events that led to her suspension. Without that girl Richard wouldn't have wanted to fire her. She had so much to worry about. Christopher was at Ms. Lampard's place. The old lady that had babysat her and cooked dinner for her two days a week had been ecstatic when Meredith had shown up at her door after all those years. But now she was on her own, this was her playground, the hospital was the one place she knew how to function. ‚Come one, Meredith, go in' she thought to herself. ‚This has been your home'. She took a deep breath and looked at the door, took a few steps and walked towards the door. A few feet before entering the building she stopped abruptly. Everything had been arranged. Jackson had made a few calls and so had his grandfather, once she had entered the hospital she wouldn't be Meredith Grey anymore. Jackson had persuaded his grandfather that it would be easier to justify a mid season transfer if it wasn't the daughter of Ellis Grey who transferred. From now on she'd be Dr. Burns. She thought it was ironic that she chose this name. She didn't want to hide behind her mothers name yet she chose her mother's maiden name to disguise her heritage and her mother's legacy. Her parents had been so young when they had gotten married that Ellis already had been Ellis Grey by the time she started her internship. „You look like you need help. Can I help you?" a young black doctor asked her. She must be a resident Meredith thought as she looked at the woman with curly black hair who wore teal green scrubs. It was the colour all surgical residents wore.  
„I'm looking for Dr. Geller. I'm here for an interview." Meredith smiled. She knew where the office was, but the resident had been friendly, so she decided to go along – at least for now.  
„He's been in surgery longer than expected." The resident explained „I can take you to his office, if you want to. It's on the"  
„2nd floor." Meredith smiled. The floors were the same and even the paintings looked like the once she had looked at so many times before. Her mother's office had been in this part of the hospital „I know my way round. But thanks for offering. I'm sure I'll find it by myself."  
„Are you transferring from another Boston hospital?" the woman asked. „You seem familiar."  
„Oh no, I grew up here." Meredith smiled.  
„So did I." The resident replied and Meredith saw that her pager vibrated. The young woman looked at her and smiled „Good luck. I have to get to surgery". Meredith nodded and sat down in front of Dr. Geller's office.

* * *

It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles. The sun was shining and the nature all around Addison's beach house was nice and green. ‚Not like the summer drought, but nice and fresh spring colours.' Derek thought to himself when the taxi stopped in front of Addison's beach house. He understood why Addison had blackmailed Mark into going with her. This was a beautiful place to raise kids. As he had not called in advance he wondered if somebody would be home.

He rang the bell and heard the ding-dong. There were voices and footsteps and the door opened itself. „Derek, What are you doing here?" Mark looked at his friend. Derek had left after his conversation with Richard Webber.

„Meredith left and she took Christopher with her." Derek said „I don't know what to think, I didn't know where to go and the last time I felt like this…" He couldn't articulate the rest, but they both knew what he was referring to.

„I suggested we go to Vegas together." Mark nodded. „If you thought that we'll do this again, you are out of your mind crazy." Indeed Mark had suggested the Vegas trip – a trip that had been the start of a love story that was worthy of telenovelas and movies. Derek had fallen head over heels in love with the girl in a bar. He had looked at her from across the room and he knew that she was the one. He had forgotten about Addison and the divorce in a matter of seconds. It had been her ever since. All the hurt had vanished and Meredith had appeared. He had been miserable after she had left him alone in Vegas the next morning and he was even more miserable now.

„I wasn't." Derek said „I just had to get out of the house I built for us. I was there and she wasn't and our son wasn't. I don't want to be there if she isn't. I needed to find a place I can breathe at." Derek said. He had once told her that she had been like coming up for fresh air, but if he thought about it, he had to admit that he still felt that way. He wanted to be fine without her, but right now he felt like he was drowning.

„And you can breathe in L.A.?" Mark wondered.

„The weather is nice and Addison said you have a guest room." Derek said. Addison had invited them to come over before they had moved „And Meredith never considered the possibility of applying to a residency spot somewhere close to Seattle." he added bitterly. Any decent hospital on the west coast would have provided them with the opportunity to see each other frequently. He could have made time to see Christopher and she would have gotten the opportunity to be a surgeon.

„Come in. And tell me what happened" Mark said. He had no clue why Derek was in L.A. and Meredith was applying for residency positions outside of Seattle.

* * *

Seattle had always been George's home, but right now he felt an impulse to flee. It was time to face the music. George hesitated for a moment before he pressed the door bell, breathed in and finally got himself to do it. Teddy Altman had told him to talk to his mother and that's what he wanted to do. It was an easy fix, he'd get away from Seattle and the responsibility for a child he thought he'd never have and his mother would be covered under his medical insurance. She had been in bad health for a while and he was running out of money to pay for consults.

„Mom, I have to talk to you, I have important news for you." George said and walked through the living room into the kitchen.

„I have news for you too. But you can go first, Georgie." His mother replied and sat down on one of the chairs. She tried hard to smile, but didn't manage to bring herself to move her facial muscles.

„Mom, I want to join the military." George blared out.

„I have breast cancer." His mother said at the same time. George looked at her and tears started to built up in his eyes. He couldn't say a word as his mom continued to explain „There are no metastasis. The doctors are optimistic. But, …"

„I can't go if you…" he stuttered. She was the only parent he had now.

„Why would you possibly want to join the military?" she wondered „Isn't saving lives here good enough?"

„It is. Mom, I'll stay, I mean someone has to take care of bills and of you. Somebody has to take care of you and now it's even more important than it was before." George defended his decision, but as he sat next to her and held her hand he soon realised that she was right. Whatever was going to happen, he had to stay.

* * *

 _-Dartmouth 1970-_

 _„Hey, I am…" Thatcher made a clumsy attempt to introduce him to the girl he had just seen. It was his first day in college and he had just stepped out of the dorm when he had seen her. She turned around and started to chat with him.  
„… so nervous. It's so exciting to be here. You'd think that a school like Dartmouth would make sure they pick the best students, but all those partying jerks from high school are still around. Sorry I interrupted you. What were you going to say?" the blonde girl smiled.  
„I… I am Thatcher." He stuttered „I live in the room right across the hall. Nice to meet you,…"  
„Ellis." She smiled. Her blonde curly hair was shining in the sun.  
„Nice to meet you, Ellis. So what are you studying?" he asked  
„Pre-med. I want to be a surgeon. I know I know, heard it all before I'm a woman, I can't be a surgeon. My parents told me over and over again." She sighed „My mom wouldn't shut up about it. I don't have what it takes…"  
„I was actually going to say that it's very impressive." He admitted.  
„You were? Care to have a drink tonight?" she smiled.  
„Sure" he nodded-  
„Good, 8 pm front door" she said determined and walked away. Thatcher Grey had a date._

* * *

After the interview Meredith began to look for apartments. MassGen would be her first choice. She had grown up in Boston and she knew her way around. Jackson's grandfather had arranged the meeting with a real estate agent for her and he had brought her to a nice apartment just across the hospital. It was a two bed room and . would pay the provision for the agent. When she looked at the second bedroom that would be the nursery her phone rang.  
„I'm glad you called. I'm so glad this is over. This was like being grilled for forty minutes." Meredith laughed.  
„Jackson's granddad grilled you?" Cristina wondered „I thought he wanted you and pretty boy so badly"  
„No, Jackson's grandfather is the Chief of Staff, he arranged the interview for me. The coordinator of the residency programme just hit on me all through our interview. That guy is creepy. So creepy" Meredith mumbled „and I walked into the guy I had sex with for the first time. Can't believe he's still working here. He was my mom's intern. What kind of self respecting surgeon stays in the same hospital their entire career, I hope he didn't recognize me."  
„Seriously?" Cristina wondered „you slept with our mom's intern?"  
„Yeah." Meredith replied „just to piss her off."  
„So MassGen is out of the mix?" Cristina concluded.  
„No, I'm just saying that Dr. Geller probably had a thing for my mom, but he didn't know he has been talking about my mom because I used her maiden name. The guy who interviewed me- not the guy I had sex with. He kept talking about her for 15 minutes. You should have seen his face when I mentioned that I have a kid…" Meredith giggled.  
„and are married." Cristina reminded her.  
„I didn't mention that. Derek still isn't talking to me and once I move to across the country with his son I have doubts it's going to improve." Meredith sighed and looked out the window. „He's not going to give me a recommendation when they call him. I put down Dr. Bailey as reference. She called me and said she'd do it, but Jackson said his grandfather would take care of everything."  
„So what's next?" Cristina wondered „Has Hopkin's called yet?"  
„Flying to New York tonight. I have an interview at 10am at Derek's former place of work. Maybe it'd be better if I…" Meredith started, but Cristina interrupted her „Might be his new place of work for all we know. He hasn't been to the hospital for 2 days and nobody knows what's happening. He vanished from the surface of the earth. Webber said he had some personal issues to sort out. So don't be surprised if you run into him. Good luck. Are you going to be back before the wedding planning takes off? I won't survive this bridesmaid shit without you."  
„I'll be there." Meredith promised and hung up. What would she do if she met him? She told the agent that pending on the response of MassGen she would take the condo. Life had a strange way of going full circle she thought. This looked a lot like the apartment Ellis had moved into immediately after they had went to Boston. It's where she had went into labor, where the fluid on the floor after her water had broken had reminded Meredith of her blood.

* * *

It had been a long evening for Mark. He had listened to Derek for hours. He knew the major bulletin points, he knew about Callie, Meredith's misguided act of bravery, the adoption, Ellis, Zola and everything that had happened between Meredith and Richard. Secretly he was impressed that things could turn so sour in a matter of days. Even though it had been increasingly more difficult to get information out of Derek with every glass of scotch he had had, Mark was determined to help. Derek had done this for him before. Despite the fact that he had been hesitant to move to L.A. he was happy here. He got to spend time with his daughter, with Addison and being a plastic surgeon in L.A. wasn't the worst prospect either. He walked into the hospital and looked at the residents who were still following him around after twelve weeks. „Abrahams, I heard you always wanted to work with me? Is that true?" He asked and looked at a shy blonde resident with a few pimples.

„Yes sir, I'd love to work with you. What do you want me to do? Assist on a breast implant or a bud job? Is the chick hot?" the residents asked enthusiastically.

„Fine, that's fantastic. And yeah, the chick is very hot." Mark nodded. Meredith really was. He handed over a chart to him and the resident looked at him with a confused expression on his face. „Here's a list of the top 100 teaching hospitals in the country. I want you to call all of them and ask if a dr. grey has applied for a mid semester transfer there." If Meredith Grey was going to work anywhere, it wasn't a sub-par hospital and top 100 would cover the ropes, Mark thought.

„I… I…" the resident stammered.

Mark smiled „and maybe you can scrub in on a mastectomy with me later. That's something even you can't screw up. And we are going to do a reconstruction that is going to put her own breast to shame"

After his first surgery he went to check on the resident who was still on the phone „Any news on Dr. Grey?" he asked.

„They told me they are not legally allowed to answer this question" the resident said.

„Try harder, sweet talk them, work your charm" Mark smiled „You can do it."

* * *

 _-Dartmouth 1970-_

 _It was five minutes past 8. Maybe she had played a trick on him, maybe she and her friends were laughing about him right now. He cursed himself for actually agreeing to this date. When he heard the sound of high heels he turned around. She had curled her hair and put on an indigo blue dress. „You came." Ellis smiled.  
„Sure, you ask, I'll follow and I bought a bottle of wine." He joked and pulled out a bottle of wine.  
„How did you get that? You don't look like you are 21." She noted. They were both freshmen.  
„My parents left it here when they dropped me off." He smiled. They had told him to save it for someone special.  
„So this is good wine? Not the cheap stuff?" she wondered. He didn't know a single thing about wine.  
„I don't know. I never drank wine." He admitted.  
Ellis laughed and rolled her eyes. She grabbed the bottle and looked at it „I'm a WASP. Alcohol runs through our blood. Do you have an opener? You can't open it if you don't have an…"  
„I have… here" he said and pulled out another item from his pocket. „So where are you from?"  
„Seattle. I grew up there. How about you?" she wondered. Her eyes were magic he thought. His heart was beating faster.  
„Seattle, it's a small world, isn't it?" he smiled. _

* * *

„You stop drinking now, Derek. I made an intern call every hospital in the country because of you." Mark smiled and put away the bottle of Scotch Derek had almost downed completely. „You don't look pretty, Shep."

„What are you going to do when you find her?" Derek wondered „Drag her back to Seattle so we can live happily ever after."

„What did you do to find out where she was after the two of you got married?" Mark sat down on the deck next to Derek. „You hired a private investigator to check on every Meredith Grey in the United States. I'll tell you where she is, you know you will go after her."

„I won't. I can live without her." Derek said and looked at the sea. The waves moved peacefully towards the shore.

„You can't. You and I both know that." Mark said „You don't know where she is and you don't have a clue where your son is and it's driving you insane. It'd drive me insane. – you drank enough to prove that." There were eight bottles of beer, one bottle of wine and two bottles of liquor. Mark made a mental note to restock the liquor cabinet before their next party.

„Even if you find out where she and Chris are, it's not going to change what happened to Zola. They took her." Derek sighed. „and she lied. She betrayed me."

„And you'll get her back once you found her and won her back and then you'll both fly back to Seattle. You and Grey have always been all unicorns and rainbows." Mark envisioned a brighter future and laughed to himself. „Grey's are hard to forget"

„Richard won't hire her back. And he won't let me hand in my resignation." Derek said.

„Well, in that case she could work here, L.A. isn't so far, you could visit her at the weekend and we'd have barbecues and I'd be like the old times, Addy, Sam, Na, you and I." Mark suggested „If you want it, there's a way."

„Mark, I don't even know where she is." Derek looked at the sand underneath his feet „Her mom did that before – leave Seattle, not call anyone, don't tell Meredith's dad where she was."

„Well, I'm about to find out. You deserve to get your ass kicked. Mom would kick your ass." Mark said „You shouldn't drink just because you are sad. You haven't lost her"

„When did you become so optimistic?" Derek looked at Mark.

„It's LA. I'm very zen here." Mark joked and got back up. At least one of them was going to have to work in the morning, and it appeared Mark was the one that did.

* * *

The airport was busy at 12 at noon, but two people just wished that time would freeze. „You don't have to go, April." Jackson said. It was stupid, they were at the airport and April had already checked in her baggage. Meredith had left and she was leaving and George was leaving, everybody he cared about was leaving Seattle.

„I signed up for three months, Jackson, and I'm …" April tried to reason with him „It's going to be fine. It's not like…"

„You are going to a warzone? You are April." Jackson said and began to hug her. He felt that she was stupid for running away. While she had made a mistake, a rookie mistake, they all had made them.

„I'm going to be back Jackson and I'll have helped so many people and I'll be a better surgeon than I am now. See you around." April said while Jackson still held on to her.

„See you around." Jackson said and let go off her.

* * *

After looking at apartments and discussing possible rental arrangements Meredith went down the street to grab a cup of coffee. Those were going to be the five minutes that she had completely to herself, but as she queued for coffee someone interrupted her thoughts "Hey, you interviewed for the vacant residency position at the hospital, didn't you?" the young black woman said. It was the girl that had offered her to bring her to Dr. Geller's office.  
"Yeah, that was me. Thanks for talking to me it's been a while since I had a normal adult face to face conversation." Meredith smiled. In 20 minutes she'd have to entertain a one year old in a hotel room.  
"Which year are you in?" the young resident asked. She looked about five years younger than Meredith.  
"Finished my 3rd year, well almost finished it. I can't believe I actually survived it." Meredith sighed. It would be another two months until she'd be a 4th year resident.  
"I know what you mean. It's stressful, all of this is stressful. I'm about to finish my 5th year. It's exhausting. I hardly ever get to spend time with my fiancé Dean. He's amazing. Civil rights lawyer, loves to spoon." The girl said. Meredith was impressed. „He proposed on Valentine's day."  
„Alright" Meredith looked at her and wondered „so do they have good coffee here?"  
"Yeah, pretty good coffee." The girl nodded „Better than the on they serve at the hospital anyway"  
"that's not difficult though." Meredith giggled. Her mother had told her never to drink that coffee „The only thing MassGen coffee and real coffee have in common is the colour. "  
"You know the coffee in MassGen?" the resident wondered.  
"My mom used to work here. She was a doctor. A surgeon actually." Meredith sighed and realized that she couldn't tell anyone her mother's name if she wanted to keep her identity a secret. „Sort of runs in the family. What's your name by the way?"  
"Maggie, Maggie Pierce." The girl said and before she got a chance to order a coffee her pager went off again. „I'm sorry, but I really have to hurry back to the hospital. I'm on call. This is a good place for coffee. Hope to see you around. Bye. "  
"Yeah. Bye." Meredith said and looked at the girl as she ran back to the hospital. They might be working together in a few days, but Meredith was still hoping she might have a chance to work in New York because she might get Derek's mom to babysit her grandson every now and then.

* * *

 _\- Seattle 1977-_

 _„May I have the rings?" the minister asked and Thatcher's brother handed them over to him. It was the backyard of the house of Ellis' grandmother that they were going to live in once they had both finished grad school. Ellis would start her residency at Seattle Grace. He was so proud of her._

 _The minister took the rings and as Thatcher continued to look at his beautiful bride said „Let these rings be forever a symbol of the unbroken circle of love. Love freely given has no beginning and no end. Love freely given has no giver and no receiver, for each is the giver and each is the receiver. May these rings remind you always of the vows you have taken here today and may these rings be blessed by the love with which they are given. Thatcher, will you place this ring on Ellis' finger and say to her, "Ellis, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love for you."" He took the ring and did as he was told. He felt blessed to be able to look into those eyes for the rest of his life.  
"Ellis, will you place this ring on Thatcher's finger and say to her, "Thatcher, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love for you." They'd have forever. _

* * *

Lexie was in an OR with Dr. Webber. Why on earth had she been the one that was without assignment when this emergency had been brought in? She looked closely at what he was doing as she noticed something. „What's the matter, Dr. Grey? Do you disagree with my method?" Richard asked his resident. Lexie looked up from the bile duct he had just clammed.

„I do, I disagree with everything you do. Look at that clip over there, but I particularly disagree with…" Lexie stammered and the combination of disagree and Grey sent Richard into a blind rage. He had done this procedure more than a hundred times, how dared she.

„Is this the way you want to talk to the Chief of surgery?" Richard yelled.

„It's the way I talk to the Chief of surgery who happens to be the reason my half sister fled the city with her son. You…" Lexie responded.

„are the reason you are even alive." He interrupted her „Thatcher wouldn't have left Ellis, you wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for me."

„Adultery is hardly an accomplishment, Dr. Webber." She said „Don't you want to…? You clipped off the …"

„If you want to criticise the way I do this procedure or my life, feel free to step away from the table or you can follow the foot path of your half sister. Are we clear?" Richard threatened.

„Sure." Lexie nodded and handed over the instruments to a nurse.

„Fine, and tell your friends neither of you is going to scrub in with me. You are distracting me and I can't deal with this kind of hostility in my OR." He cursed as she left the room.

* * *

Arizona and George sat in his living room together. „We have to do something. We … she needs to be there for Sofia… Sofia is what she always wanted." Arizona said.  
„I know. But we can't push her, we can't force Sofia on her." George said. „Mer tried to and she freaked out."  
„Callie is miserable. She thinks she's some sort of angel of doom that brings nothing but misery to her child." Arizona said „she thinks that's what she's becoming to anyone."  
„Maybe we could go swimming with Sofia and Callie will be in the leisure centre and she'll notice that…" George suggested.  
Arizona rolled her eyes and wondered how stupid her fiancée's ex husband was „George, She has a huge scar from surgery, I don't think it's a good idea. Outside of work she hardly gets out of the apartment."  
„I could come over with her." George smiled „I won't leave them on their own, I'll be there the whole time."  
„I don't think that's a good idea either. She might feel cornered." Arizona sighed.  
„This sucks! All of this sucks" George said and threw a peanut onto his living room table.

„What's the matter George?" Arizona sensed that there was more to George's bad mood and thoughtlessness.

„It's the whole situation with Callie and Sofia and my mom- my mom has breast cancer." George said. „I can't go if she has cancer and I can't pay for her treatment if I stay"

Arizona's eyes wandered through the room. „I agree this sucks." She said and breathed. „She has to know that she isn't what happened to her, but that she is what she chooses to become. You can always talk to me O'Malley. I wouldn't have chosen things to be that way, but they are"

* * *

 _Boston, May 1983_

 _„I'm so glad to meet you Dr. Grey. I was surprised to receive your phone call." Harper Avery got up from his seat when the young applicant came into his office. He had been surprised to receive her call after she had declined his previous offer._

 _„Well, I decided the truly great accomplishments in medicine couldn't be achieved in Seattle." Ellis greeted him_

 _„I'm glad to see you have changed your mind. How's your daughter?" he wondered and peeked through the door where a young girl was sitting on a chair._

 _„She's still dealing with our move across the country, but she'll start school soon, things are going to be fine." Ellis said._

 _„Well, what are your goals?" Harper Avery wondered._

 _„I want to become an excellent surgeon." Ellis smiled._

 _„You already are an excellent surgeon. You almost won the Award." The Chief of surgery smiled „The foundation was very impressed by your publication."_

 _„But it's a big boys club, I get it, I was the only female surgeon in my residency group. But I can assure you that I'm going to work ev_ _en harder than you can ever imagine. I'm great and..." Ellis said, but was interrupted. „You don't have to sell yourself to me, I'm sold. I've been sold during the voting, I voted for the Grey method. When are you going to start? I see you are with…"_

 _Ellis Grey nodded and finished his sentence „October. I have to take care of childcare for Meredith. I have a child to worry about. This child won't be of your concern."_

 _„Feel free to bring her after work, my daughter in law is bringing her son too." Jackson's grandfather smiled._

 _„You don't hold my daughter against me?" Ellis wondered._

 _„I know what it's like to deal with the disappointment of raising your child on your own after the father took off. Welcome to the team!"_

* * *

„Now it's just you and me" Cristina sighed when Alex sat down next to her in a booth in the corner of the bar.  
Alex smiled and nodded „When we started and Webber said only two of us would make it, I always thought it would be me and … "  
„Meredith" Cristina said.  
„Do you think she's ever coming back?" Alex wondered. He missed her.  
„I really think she's serious and honestly, Mass Gen or Mount Sinai are amazing hospitals." Cristina said „If I could, I'd go"  
„Yeah" Alex smiled „But we should be quiet, Webber is over there."  
Cristina rolled her eyes „Yeah, it's all his fault. And all of yours. Honestly, they can't fire all of you. Why don't you just talk to him?"

* * *

„Cristina, have you seen Derek?" Lexie wondered while she sorted through his post op notes the next morning. She had a few questions regarding the management of two patients who had had an aneurysm coiling earlier that week and had come back for a check up. It was an out patient procedure and Lexie was scheduled to do the follow up.

„Fortunately McAss has been MIA today." Cristina smiled.

„I hope he's finally…" Lexie said. Maybe he had figured out that Meredith was in Boston.

Cristina interrupted her „… it's Meredith you should be worried about."

„It's all of them I should be worried about." Lexie said. Derek was the father of her godchild, even though there had never been a Christening she felt like the god aunt and after all Meredith was her sister. „And Richard, he's been aggressive. He kicked me out of the OR."

„I don't know what's the matter with him and Meredith." Cristina said „This isn't about her sister, is it?"

„The other one?" Lexie said. Meredith hadn't told her a lot about the adoption, but she was aware that Alex knew everything about it for some reason. „I don't know, I mean, I'm not sure. All I know is that Dr. Webber is obsessed with Ellis and Meredith and that he's sloppy. He clipped off the common bile duct on his chole patient." He had kicked her out of the OR before she had been able to point out the mistake.

„Are you saying he made a mistake?" Cristina looked at her. If he had made a mistake, there might be a way to get the board to revise their decision.

„I don't know, he kicked me out of the OR." Lexie said „but he did clip off the common bile duct"

* * *

„Stop drinking, Derek." Mark insisted „What's the matter? I get it, Meredith left"

Derek interrupted him. Mark could tell that he was intoxicated „You… Meredith left, I don't know where she went, I was a jerk, I blamed her for what happened, but I never expected her to go. She left and now I don't know where she is." A tear ran down his cheek. „Have you ever screwed up so badly that you just think that there's no way to repair the damage. That things got so bad that you fled the state?"

Mark looked at him. He had fled the state before. He had went to Seattle when Derek's and Addison's marriage had turned sour, Derek had become complacent and indifferent and Addison had been questioning herself. „Derek, she lost her job, if she wants to work as a surgeon it's a no-brainer, she has to leave Seattle." Mark said. Neither of them said anything for a while and they just listened to the sound of the waves and heard the seagulls singing a song of life. Mark smiled and poured himself a drink. „I left New York because I was in love with Addison and I knew that she was miserable with you. I left because I knew I'd want to make her feel better and that it was inappropriate considering she was your wife at that stage. So yeah, I know" It was the first time Mark had admitted to Derek that he had been in love with Addison while they had been married. „Did you feel about her like this when we got married?" Derek wondered.

„That's what I felt about her every day since we got met." Mark said „When she walked up to the altar with her dad, when they asked the question if anyone … I just wanted to get up and run off into the sunset with her, but you were my best friend, your mom practically raised me… I knew what she meant to you – and if you love somebody you don't want that person to get hurt or feel the pain that you feel."

„Mark, I know she had to go, I had to let her go, I never wanted to hold her back, but she just left." Derek said „and her mother just left and she never saw her dad again. I don't want this to happen again. I don't want my kid to grow up without his dad."

Mark nodded. „And you quit, you let her go. I know what you are like, you didn't talk to her, you didn't let her explain her point of view and you made her feel like she's the most horrible person in the universe." Mark paused „You did this with Amy and you did this with Addison, it's how you are dealing with things that don't go your way." He would have added „You were acting like an ass", but he thought Derek had gotten the point without that. Derek had excluded Amelia from his life after she had crashed his car and stolen his prescription pad to get high on painkillers.

„Things got hard." Derek said.

„Do you know what happens when things get hard?" Mark wondered. „You don't quit, you fight harder."

„She ruined our family." Derek defended himself. "I didn't do anything"

„You didn't fight for her when you should have been a team" Mark lectured him. „She gave you a beautiful son and she made you happy."

„For the longest time." Derek mumbled to himself and looked at the bottle in front of him.

„Derek, don't drink and shave for god's sake. You are a disgrace." Mark told him „I had an intern call every hospital in the country, turns out they aren't allowed to forward information like this, something about data protection, but Mt. Sinai, Mass Gen and John Hopkins had openings."

„Among 58 other hospitals in the country" Derek suggested. „She could be anywhere. And I don't know what's worse. Not knowing where she is or not knowing if I want to know."

„50 you'll fly to wherever she is within days of finding out." Mark laughed „You and Grey are like a romance novel."

„I'd go there because I want to know where she took my son." Derek said.

„No, because you love her and you don't want to admit to yourself just how much you love her." Mark smiled „It was worth it to admit to Addison and move to L.A. Most of the time anyway."

„I hate her. I'm miserable because…" Derek continued, but Mark interrupted her „… you two keep avoiding each other. You love her."

„I can live without her" Derek insisted. He knew he was more trying to persuade himself than Mark.

„You can't live without her, you have never lived without a woman, first it was your mom and your sisters, then it was Addison, then it was Meredith. You've never been alone. You don't know how to be alone." Mark said. It was true, Derek thought to himself. He had never lived alone except for the few peaceful years when Mark and he had shared a dorm room which Mark's parents had paid for.

* * *

 _Do you have what it takes? If your marriage is in trouble, can you weather the storm? When the ground gives way and your world collapses, maybe you just need to have faith. And trust that you can survive this together. Maybe you just need to hold on tight. And no matter what, don't let go._

* * *

Meredith was carrying Christopher down the gangway. She looked at the signs and finally saw where she would have to go to get her baggage. Traveling with a one year old involved a few logistical challenges. She was waiting for Christopher's stroller and looked for her suitcase while looking what her overly adventurous son was up to at the same time. Christopher was waving a few women hello. Meredith rolled her eyes when she saw it and thought to herself that this young man had definitely inherited his father's charm. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. Every time she looked at him she saw him in her. While still looking for the stroller and the suitcase she picked up Christopher from the bench he had pulled himself up to sit on. „We are in Daddy's hometown, baby." She whispered „Maybe mommy gets a job here. It would be nice because maybe…" Meredith paused. Despite the fact that Mt. Sinai was one of the few top rated hospitals with openings there was another reason she had applied. ‚Maybe your daddy moves here too and we can be a family again' she wished, but Christopher just smiled and said „New York. Daddy" with a voice that was filled with more enthusiasm than she had ever heard. Maybe New York and Daddy wasn't a bad combination after all.


	29. Chapter 29

Happy New Year everyone! I hope all of you had a wonderful New Years Eve and got to spend Christmas with your family!

Patsy: Richard Webber is stubborn and residents don't have too much power. It'll be a while until something changes on the Chief front. You'll see about Mt. Sinai in this chapter.

Kiley: Thanks for the review, I hope you keep enjoying the story!

Melanie: It'll be a while until Meredith realizes who Maggie is (and she's not going to figure it out herself). Glad you still enjoy the story.

Susan: I hope you enjoy reading!

Shelley: Thanks! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday!

Sara: New York is certainly going to be exciting for MerDer and Derek is going to be someone who confronts Richard again, but he won't be the only one.

Cheryl: It'll be a while until Derek meets Meredith again, but they'll be back together eventually.

Anita: Derek's NY plans are going to conflict with Meredith's. He won't be there, but … ah.. just read the chapter ;) hope you are still enjoying this story.

Carla: Meredith will see some Shepherds in the hospital

Darlene: Thank you for the review! I don't know why it doesn't show uo, but I hope you enjoyed your skiing trip!

* * *

Chapter 29

"There's nothing else we can do for you." These are the last words a surgeon wants to tell a patient. Giving up doesn't come easy to us, so we do everything in our power not to. For surgeons, a lost cause just means – try a little harder.

While Meredith's plane touched down in New York, Cristina was dealing with the injuries that a man in his 40s had suffered in an accident. He had nice black hair and was more trained than the average male. Hands are busy in the OR most of the time, but sometimes all anybody hears is the sound of a monitor that indicates that something is wrong. They had been in surgery for eight hours when they noticed that his pupils were dialated and didn't react to light. Cristina looked at Teddy in shock. Their surgery had been flawless, but the pupils were still dialated. „You have to let him go, he won't wake up" Teddy said after the neuro fellow had left the OR.

„Stop! Cristina!" Teddy insisted and put her hands on the resident's.

„But…" Cristina begann to utter while looking at the opened skull.

„No, there's no point. There's too much hemorage" Teddy said. „He's too far gone." What a waste of a night Cristina thought to herself.

* * *

The night had been horrible for Meredith. Whoever said that children were cute certainly wouldn't agree that they were after the night she had just spend with a crying son. It was 7.30 am now and Christopher had fallen asleep about twenty minutes ago. Meredith got into a taxi that would take her from a hotel near JFK to Manhattan where she'd pay someone a visit.  
The taxi stopped at Hudson Heights and Meredith told the driver to wait for her. A woman in her sixties opened the door. „Meredith?" Carolyn Shepherd asked in surprise. Her daughter-in-law had never visited her before nor had her son mentioned any plans to do so.  
"I'm sorry to wake you up at this time of the night, but he asked for his dad all night. How do you explain to a one year old that his dad is on the other side of the country? He asked where his daddy was and he wouldn't sleep. I have a job interview in 2 hours and I didn't know what to do because I can't take him there. It's only going to be for a few hours." Meredith begged her.  
„Come in, I can take him." Carolyn smiled and opened the door for them. „But tell me what you are doing here? What happened? Last time Derek and I talked you were going to adopt an African child."  
"Zola, yeah. But no, I can't tell you." Meredith sighed and put the diaper bag onto the stool in the hallway „Please just take him and call Derek if you want to, I'm sure he's going to be delighted to hear from you. Here's his diaper bag. Everything important is in there. I really have to get going if I don't want to be late." Meredith ran out the door and jumped back into her taxi. Her interview was in 25 minutes and she hoped that she would be on time.

* * *

Addison and Mark were standing in their kitchen. Derek had been drinking until the sun rose and was sleeping in the guest room. Mark, Maria and Addison were preparing for another day at the hospital. Addison was looking at the sea of beer cans, bottles and whiskey bottles in front of her. A hangover wouldn't be the only thing her exhusband would be sorry for in a few hours.

„Get him out of my house" Addison said and looked at the pile of garbage that presented itself to her „You can't raise a child in this mess"

„He's having a hard time" Mark smiled apologetic.

„Let him have a hard time somewhere else, he has been like that for too long" Addison said. „Carolyn called, she's concerned about him"

„I'm trying Addison, I even had an intern call every top 50 hospital in the country asking whether they had a resident transfer or openings, but so far I wasn't lucky." Mark sighed „– and Meredith's little friends don't want to tell me what's going on."

„Get him out until the end of the week, this isn't healthy." Addison said „Drinking scotch from 10 am to 6 am isn't. Drinking two bottles a day isn't either." She paused and looked at him „He never felt like this for me. She's gone and it feels like his whole world fell apart."

„He doesn't have a clue where she is." Mark said. „I felt like this when you said yes, your wedding day was the worst day of my life. I always felt about you this way."

„Mark, please. Don't. Find out where she is" Addison said. „I have to go – and you have surgery in thirty minutes"

„I'm trying" Mark said and picked up his daughter.

„Trying is all that you do Mark, you try too hard." Addison nodded. While he was everything he ever promised her to be, she just wasn't sure if she was happy.

„What is that supposed to mean?" Mark wondered. He was unaware of her feelings.

„I think you know it, we both know it." She said. „If you think about the first person you want to talk to – it's not me"

* * *

 _March 1980_

 _„Did you spend the night here? I thought you were off at 5pm" Richard wondered when she walked into the on-call room and saw Ellis.  
„I got pulled into an emergency surgery before I got to leave. The patient had to be monitored afterwards, so I was stuck here all night." Ellis smiled. They both knew that she loved to be at the hospital. „What about you? I thought you were going to meet Adele for dinner last night."  
„My surgery went late, so I was late and then I stayed because I knew she'd be mad if I showed up 90 minutes late." Richard laughed.  
„They don't get it." Ellis said while she lay down on the bed next to Richard's. „– neither do Smith and Hunter. Surgery is a male country club affair for them."  
„How's your patient?" Richard wondered.  
„He's fine. He let me take the lead. He was busy telling the anesthesiologist about his last round of gold and how his wife is wasting all his money." Ellis said and rolled her eyes.  
„Last time I was in the OR with him he told me that his black housekeeper was lazy." Richard sighed and wondered „How's Thatcher?"  
„Fine, he's doing what he calls research at the university." Ellis laughed.  
„He's lucky to have found somebody like you. You look beautiful even though you haven't slept all night." Richard complimented her. Ellis looked at him and turned the key around to lock the door.  
„What are you doing Ellis?" Richard asked with a hint of surprise.  
„I'm going to help you to relax." She smiled and sat down on his lap „You had a rough night as well." She slowly unbuttoned the shirt that Richard was wearing.  
„Ellis, we're married. We can't do this!" Richard said and looked at her. He froze while he watched her.  
„Thatcher and Adele won't find out." Ellis whispered into his ear. „Everything we do can stay inside these walls. They don't need to know."  
„Ellis,…" Richard tried to insist.  
„Come on" she said and took his hand and positioned them on her breasts „I know we both want it."_

* * *

„Hey" George greeted Cristina and Alex when he walked into the scrub room.  
„George? What are you doing here?" Cristina asked him in surprise.  
„Lexie said you'd be here. I just wanted to tell you that my mom threatened to kill me if I leave the country" George smiled and rolled with his eyes. „I'll stick around a little while longer"  
„You are not going to join the army? Alex wondered.  
„No. My mom…" George paused „I can't leave her"  
„What about April?" Cristina wondered  
„I don't know." George admitted and looked at Jackson „Why are you looking like this?"

„She left" Jackson said and looked down.

Cristina's phone went off and she looked at the display. „Hang on a sec, I have to get this" She walked out of the room.  
„Shepherd? You are alive." She asked.  
„She isn't talking to me, well actually I wasn't talking to her, but I don't even know where she is right now and I don't know where my son is. Has she talked to you?" the person on the other line asked.  
„Yes" Cristina nodded.  
„Come on, you have to tell me." Derek begged „Nobody is talking to me. I called Meredith, Lexie, Thatcher, everyone I know who might know where she is."  
„She needs time. She has applied to a few hospitals on the East Coast and I really think she is going to move. Thanks to you and Dr. Webber! She's in New York for her interview today." Cristina said „She is a surgeon, Shepherd, don't take that away from her and insist on her staying in Seattle. She screwed up one time, don't make her pay for it for the rest of her life. She needs to be in the OR. So wherever you are right now you better get your ass back here and let her figure out the rest for herself."  
„I don't want to take that away from her, but I don't want her to take my son away from me either." Derek admitted „I'm not Thatcher and she's not Ellis. I want to be a part of my kids' life and I want us to stay here."  
„Live in the house in the middle of the woods, have more bubbly children." Cristina said and rolled her eyes.  
„Yeah" Derek mumbled.  
„Have you considered apologizing? " Cristina wondered.  
„I have nothing to apologize for. She's the one who…" Derek said, but Cristina interrupted him. „Oh you do. You refused to talk to her for days, you blamed her for Zola being taken away. You shut her out completely and you didn't have her back when she needed you…shall I go on?"  
„It was her fault. She ran away before I knew how I felt." Derek told Cristina.  
„Don't you think she feels guilty about that without you blaming her for it?" Cristina asked him. „You made it harder on her. When she never gave you crap about spending every waking minute at the hospital before…."  
„I spend every minute there for her." Derek defended his decision to start another trial „I was setting up everything for a new project. So she is in New York right now?"

* * *

Rush hour traffic in New York was something Meredith didn't want to get used to. She had been thirty minutes late when she arrived at Mt. Sinai and the residency coordinator was in surgery by the time she arrived. The secretary looked at her while she waited on a chair for her interviewer to arrive„Dr. Grey, please follow me. Somebody will see you soon" the black haired slightly obese asian lady led her into an office.

So this was the hospital Derek worked at, Meredith thought to herself. Manhattan was certainly something to get used to, but Mt. Sinai was one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. She looked around the room and looked at the picture frame on one of the shelves. Those kids seemed familiar she thought to herself. Where had she seen them before? Suddenly it hit her, those were Liz Shepherd's kids. There was Serena, Kyle, Nathan, Jennifer and Rebeca. Christ, Meredith rolled her eyes, she hadn't planned on making her job interview a family reunion even though she wasn't sure whether Liz's husband would even recognize her. The door knot turned, she looked at the door and looked at the man that came in: Dr. Dugard, the coordinator of the residency programme at Mt. Sinai.

„Meredith, what a surprise! So we finally get to meet." He said and extended his hand to her. „Carolyn never mentioned that you two thought about relocating."

„We didn't. It's me – and Christopher." Meredith admitted „Just me and him."

„Your surgical record looks impressive, Meredith, you published and your name is well established in the medical field, but as far as I see it, there's a chance that you won't finish your residency here and we are looking for reliability in a candidate."

„If this is about my private…"

„Meredith, this is about your private life, this is about Derek. If you are running from him, I have reason to believe that you are not going to be able to work with him"

„Derek is in Seattle."

„He called this morning and asked whether there was a chance to get his old job back."

* * *

After looking at the chart of one of his patients Alex walked throught the surgical unit to find Dr. Webber. „ , have you seen the chief?" he asked his former mentor when he saw her.  
„No." Bailey replied.  
„There's something wrong with his emergency chole patient." Lexie ran to Bailey.  
„Ugh, he looks nasty, what happened to him?" Alex said in shock. The patient in front of them had turned yellow.  
„We'll have to find out." Bailey said. „Come on, call one of your interns! Let them do the tests"

„He's yellow" Lexie said and the intern next to her starred at the man „This is the yellowest man that I have ever seen."  
„Right? He's, like, lemon yellow. Like mustard yellow." Another intern nodded.  
„Hey, hey, we get it. He's yellow. I'm trying to find out why." Bailey sat and grabbed the portable ultrasound. Alex, Lexie and the two interns looked at the monitor „Ultrasound shows dilated ducts." Lexie said.  
„Which means obstructive jaundice, but the chief only took out the gallbladder." Alex said „And we never saw any signs of liver disease or cancers, but could that mean that the chief accidentally clipped the common bile duct? Oh, my God."

Lexie realized something as she looked at his chart. „He did… and kicked me out of surgery."  
„Okay, okay, stop Right now, both of you. Now did you actually see the chief clip the common bile duct?" Bailey wondered  
„No, of course not." Alex rolled his eyes.  
„But" Lexie tried to speak up, but Dr. Bailey interrupted her „But nothing. That's one of the most serious mistakes a general surgeon can make, so let's not make this accusation lightly."  
„It wasn't an accusation" Alex stated. He and Lexie both knew that he had done it.  
„Uh, stop talking. Just get an ERP to find the exact cause of this man's discoloration. And, doctors, if I find out that either of you has said a word about this to anyone, I will make sure that you are the ones who require emergency surgery."

* * *

 _June 1980_

 _Thatcher walked up to OR where Ellis was supposed to get out of surgery. Ellis was still wearing a scrub cap and surgical gloves and now tried to scrub out of surgery in the scrub room and she was smiling at the person who exited the room. „Ellis, I was looking …" Thatcher said when the door opened, he was able to hear her laugh, which was something he hadn't heard in months, and watched the way his wife was looking at his coworker from across the room. Ellis was still unaware that her husband paid a visit. „Hello, you must be Richard, Elis told me a lot about you. Nice to finally meet you."  
„Daddy, can we see mommy now?" the young girl on his arm looked up at him.  
„You have a kid? Ellis never mentioned she had a kid." The young black resident said and got down on his knees to be face to face with her „What's your name young lady?"  
„Medeth" the young girl replied.  
„She's 2" Thatcher said.  
„Richard, I was looking for you , I thought we wanted to…" she said when she walked out of the door. She paused and looked at her husband in shock. She had almost given away that Richard and her had arranged to meet in the hallway after surgery „Thatcher, what are you doing here?"  
„Mommy, I wanted to see you. Daddy went to…" Meredith said.  
„Hello sweetie." Ellis smiled at her daughter. Her face turned angrier when she looked at her husband „Didn't I tell you that a hospital isn't the right place for her?"  
„She wanted to see you, she just wanted to see you." _

* * *

Derek was sitting on his bed in the guest room when Addison came to check on him. Mark was at work and she felt uncomfortable sitting in the living room alone while her ex husband hadn't left his bed. Maria was playing with a unicorn toy Amelia had given to her when she had visited Mark and her a few weeks ago. „You have a nice house here. I could move in, couldn't I?" Derek joked when she walked into the room with Maria.

„Derek, you can't avoid dealing with the Meredith thing forever." Addison said „and the drinking – it's not going to solve anything. Derek, I've known you for a while and you've never been like this."

„Don't mention her name!" He told her.

„What am I suppsed to say? My ex husband is drinking scotch until 6.00 am on my deck and you haven't shaved and … it's scary. You can't let a woman drag you down like that." Addison said „What would our Manhattan friends think if they saw you like this?"

„Manhattan, yeah, that was a lifetime ago. I called the hospital this morning and asked them if I can get my job back because I don't even know where she is – and every time I look at Christopher I see her." Derek looked into Addison's eyes. „I see her in him all the time."

Addison nodded „You never felt that way for me, that's why I know she's worth fighting for."

„She's the one… she…" Derek tried to put his feelings into words. He loved her even though he hated her.

„I know Derek." Addison nodded.

„But I can't." Derek said. He couldn't fly to whereever she was.

„Derek…"

* * *

After the interview Meredith went back to Carolyn's house. She rang the door bell and when Carolyn let her in she walked into the living room where Christopher was playing and sat down „What's the matter, Meredith? You show up at my house, you look like you haven't slept in weeks and you are applying for a job in New York. Derek didn't mention a word about moving back to New York. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have my grandchild closer to me, but something is very odd here."  
Meredith looked at the room she was sitting in. There were countless picture frames including one of their wedding pictures and one that had been taken at the hospital during Christopher's birthday party. She bit her lips and started to talk. „I was fired, we lost Zola because of it, Derek and I had a fight because of it. He hasn't talked to me since and he's not in Seattle, I don't know where he is, I'm very sorry for showing up here uninvited."  
„Meredith, you are always welcome to stay here." Carolyn said „You are my grandchild's mother. There's always an open door for you. So why do you look so tired?"  
Surprised by the friendly words she heard from her mother in law, she replied „I look tired because the past two weeks I was staying at a friend's apartment and I took care of his daughter, well his ex wife's daughter whom he gave his sperm to produce, but anyway. She was a preemie and she was delivered after her mom was assaulted and brought to the hospital. The child was discharged and she's still in the hospital because she had brain surgery and is still in recovery." Meredith noticed that she was starting to talk way too fast „She needed help and as I was fired I helped out with Sofia."  
„So you'd have the perfect excuse to avoid my son." Carolyn smiled and poured her a mug of cocoa. „No judgment, Meredith. He's a runner. But you seem to be a runner too. Or why did you pick residency programs at the other side of the country?"  
„Honestly. I don't even know. I hate Boston and I don't really know New York or Baltimore. But most of the best rated hospitals with open spots are on the East Coast and at the moment I really have to get away for Seattle and I have to get back into the OR if I don't want to fall behind too far." Meredith smiled.  
„Do you want to have a piece of chocolate cake?" Carolyn wondered.  
„I guess." Meredith nodded and Carolyn sat down next to her after she went to the kitchen to get two plates and two pieces of homemade chocolate cake.  
„Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have my son back here with us, but you have to talk to him." Carolyn said when they had finished their piece of cake.  
„Have you talked to Derek?" Meredith wondered. It would have been the obvious thing to do.  
„Yes. He called, but I haven't told him that you or Christopher are here." Carolyn explained „It's something the two of you need to discuss. I don't want to get in the middle of that. All I know is that he loves you and his son and that you seem to love them too. Can I take you to the airport? I saw your plane tickets for tomorrow night. You don't have to take a taxi."  
„Thank you, Ms Shepherd. I'd really appreciate it." Meredith smiled.  
„Now I'm offended, I told you to call me Carolyn so many times before." Carolyn hugged Meredith. „Everything is going to be fine child."

* * *

 _August 1980_

 _Ellis and Thatcher were kissing heavily in one of the supply closets. „Ellis, you have a child, we can't continue doing this. I'm not a home wrecker." Richard whispered.  
„I love you, Richard. Forget Meredith, forget Adele and Thatcher. We can be happy together." Ellis replied and continued to kiss him while untieing his scrub pants.  
„You have a daughter and we had some pretty close calls." Richard tried to get outof her hold „Smith almost caught us the other day. We can't risk this."  
„Don't you like it? The thrill, the rush of adrenaline?" Ellis kissed his neck. „You get me to places my husband doesn't even dream of."  
„Your daughter needs you, Ellis. I couldn't live with myself if we keep doing this." _

* * *

Alex, George, Lexie and Jackson stood in front of the Chief's office. They had waited for him about thirty minutes by the time he showed up and let them in. Lexie looked at Alex and he nodded.  
„Dr. Webber. Meredith wasn't alone. We did it. O'Malley, Avery, Kepner, Little Grey and I helped her." Alex said when the Chief had finally sat down in his chair. All other residents except April stood behind him. „She told us to let her take the fall."  
„It's a little too late for confessions now." Richard said and closed a file that was laying on his table „I urge you to keep quiet because all of you would be fired for this and we can't afford to lose any more residents after Grey. I'm contacting Adamson and Percy right now to see if they are willing to work here again."  
„It's not too late to tell the board about your surgery." Alex smiled. The others knew about the botched surgery as well. „You clipped off the common bile duct."  
„Don't you dare to threaten me, Dr. Karev. I was a doctor before you ran around in diapers." Richard yelled.  
„I will if you don't give Meredith her job back." Alex said. „Seriously? She didn't endanger Torres or the baby. We didn't endanger them. She wanted to help Callie because Callie needed to see Sofia."

„And look how Dr. Torres is doing now!" Richard yelled „Emotionally, she is refusing to have a look at hospital has standards and I was too lax on enforcing them before, but I'm not willing to continue making the wrong decisions for this hospital."

„In that case you should stop being in the OR. You could have killed that patient!" Lexie blurred out and all their heads turned and looked at her.  
„It wasn't my decision, it was the board's decision." Richard said „Dr. Grey acted against Dr. Bailey's strict orders."  
„Don't tell me that they don't act on your recommendation. You screwed up her life before. Don't do it this time." Alex said. Jackson and George looked surprised after he had blurred out this accusation.

„You know the story?" Richard wondered.

„Enough. We talk. I saved her life and she sort of gets me. I know the story." Alex said. Meredith had told him about the affair after he had saved her from the water „You promised Ellis you'd leave your wife for her and you didn't after she left Thatcher. Meredith moved to the other side of the country and never saw her dad again for 25 years. End of story."

„Has she told you that Ellis had a child?" Richard wondered „And every time I look into her eyes, I see all this opportunity, I see the life Ellis and I could have had."

„You are a coward. Just like Thatcher, both of you were weak." Alex said and continued to make his point. „And you clipped off the common bile duct, want to talk about that? Want to talk about how that happened? Or do you want me to talk to the board?"

„They won't believe you." Richard said and left his office.

* * *

Meredith was sitting in Derek's childhood home talking to his sister when her phone rang „Derek? Why are you calling?" she wondered when she answered the call.  
„Let me talk to Christopher." He insisted. He felt too insecure to talk to her.  
„Sure." Meredith nodded and went into Derek's old bedroom where Carolyn had put the pram and the playpen. „Your daddy wants to talk to you" she whispered and Christopher looked up.  
„Christopher. I missed you buddy. Daddy missed you." Derek said and Meredith's eyes filled with tears.

„Derek, they offered me the job and I'm going to take it because I don't have a choice. If I want to continue my residency, I have to take this job." Meredith said. She knew he'd hear her because the phone was on speaker.  
Derek seemed to ignore what he had just heard and continued to talk to his son. „Daddy missed you and he'll take you out for a ferryboat ride when he's back from L.A and you are back in his arms. When you are back from New York and he won't ever let you go again."  
„Derek, I won't come back." Meredith said and crushed his hopes „I'm going to stay here and we are going to move into a nice two bedroom."  
„You can't do this!" Derek insisted.  
„Why? Because you are in Seattle? Or because you care about me?" Meredith wondered „You clearly didn't seem to care about me since I was fired. You haven't talked to me! You blamed me that Zola was taken away from us and you haven't let me forget that for one second. Cristina is going to come over and pack a few boxes and send them over…"  
„What about Christopher?" Derek asked cautiously.  
„Christopher is going to come with me. You can visit him anytime you want." Meredith said.  
„Wow, you are just like your mother." Derek said bitterly.  
„This isn't fair Derek. It's not like I have a choice, I need a job, I need this opportunity" Meredith tried to explain.  
„It's kidnapping and you are doing to me what your mom did to Thatcher. You could have interviewed at UCLA." He said. Yes, UCLA would have been a wonderful hospital, but she had felt it was too close to Addison and Mark and the life she had once had.  
„Don't you say I'm like my mother. You don't even know her. You haven't met her, you haven't talked to her and right now you are saying I'm a cold hearted bitch, but I'm not." Meredith yelled, she felt an impulse to hang up.

„You act like you are. Meredith, I need him…" Derek said.

„Derek, I'm not my mother and I can prove it to you. I'll leave Christopher with you for the first few weeks. We'll figure this out once I come to pick up the rest of my things." Meredith suggested. „Don't you say I'm just like my mother, I'm nothing like her."  
„Well she took you to Boston without your father's consent, didn't she? That's kidnapping." Derek bit his lip.  
Meredith said down on his bed and looked at the ceiling „Derek, I really want this to work. I love you"

„Well I don't know if I can…" Derek swallowed.

„I don't want to run away, but right now I have to make sure to I look after myself and my career and that I do what's in Christopher's best interest. Cristina was right, I am a surgeon and I have to make sure that I can complete my residency. I love you Derek..." Meredith explained, but Derek interrupted her. „I can't love a person like you, Meredith. Your behaviour ruined everything we had." He knew he was lieing to himself. He hated himself for feeling love in spite of everything that had happened.  
„Cristina will pick up my stuff at the house, she has a spare key, I'll leave Christopher with your sister. Her husband said I'm not the right candidate for Mt. Sinai"

„You are in New York?" Derek wondered.

„She adores him." Meredith smiled „You can pick him up there, I'm sure your family will love to see you. My lawyer is going to get in touch with you."

* * *

„What's up Shep?" Mark asked when he handed a beer can over to Derek.

„I never told Meredith this, but Richard never got over Ellis, the nursing home sent a log to Meredith where they recorded all of Ellis' visitors. He visited her twice every day for four month before she died." Derek looked at Mark.

„Does Meredith know how he feels about her mother?" Mark wondered.

„She, I guess she does, but I don't know if he still feels about her that way." Derek opened his can and took a mouthful. „Meredith found out she has a half sister. Ellis and Richard had an affair."

„Good for him, I never pegged him to be such a casanova." Mark laughed. He was the one with affairs and hot steamy on call room sex, not Richard Webber.

„So this is personal?" Mark wondered.

„When it comes to Meredith everything is personal for Richard…" Derek sighed.

„He's feeling guilty because he knocked her up and she flet the scene. I get the impulse." Mark smirked.

„He isn't feeling guilty he blames her because she waited more than five minutes to tell him." Derek corrected him.

„What about you?" Mark wondered „You are mad at her because she waited more than five minutes to tell you." Mark was right. God, when had his best friend become so wise, he wondered to himself.

„Well, maybe she should work on her communication skills." He laughed.

„And maybe you should stop being mad at her, what happened is said and done, but I can recommend make up sex, that's definitely worth it. Addison and I had lots of…" Mark teased him as he knew how uncomfortable Derek got whenever they talked about Addison.

„Mark, I'm serious…" Derek interrupted him.

„So am I, Derek, it looks like good old Richard never get over Ellis, those Grey women are very hard to forget" Mark said and paused. He took a mouthful of his beer and looked at the sunset „and I don't think you can do it. The way you talked about her, the way you look at her. You and Meredith… you know what I'm saying… she's the one…"

„I know she's the one, or I know she was the one. I'm just not sure whether she's still that person." The person he thought she was wouldn't have left his son with him without a fight.

* * *

 _August 1982_

 _Thatcher walked into the hospital. „What are you doing here, Thatcher?" Ellis asked._

 _„Ellis, I came her to tell you that I'm going to leave you and that I'm going to take Meredith with me if you keep working crazy hours. You have a daughter" Thatcher said. It sounded like a rhyme he had learnt off by heart._

 _„Leave Thatcher, Leave. I dare you!" Ellis moved closer to his ear and whispered „But you won't do it anyway because you are weak and you are not able to stand up for yourself because of just how pathetic you are"_

 _„Ellis, Meredith…" He stuttered._

 _„Is going to be fine, she's a child" Ellis interrupted him. „She doesn't care if her mother is home on her birthday. She won't remember it anyway"_

 _„And it won't be long until she doesn't remember you." Thatcher said and walked away. „I wouldn't have ever thought that you would become this kind of person. What happened to you?"_

* * *

Derek sat down next to Richard „She's going to leave me and go to whereever it is she's going, at least that's what my sister said and it's your fault. She's going to take our son with her eventually. I don't think she can live without him… because I can't" he admitted. Maybe Richard would let him go.  
„It's what she knows how to do, Derek. It was the boards' decision. I can't overrule them." Richard hid behind a decision he had persuaded them to make.  
„You messed up her life before – in the worst way possible." Derek accused Richard and added „I can't lose him."

„I lost any chance to meet her because of her." Richard said looking at the club soda in front of him „I… my whole life would have been different."

„Whatever happened between you and Ellis is on you Richard. Not on Meredith." Derek insisted.

„This has nothing to do with Ellis." Richard vetoed.

„I beg to differ. Are you sure you can't give her her old job back? You could do it for me" Derek insisted. „She wasn't the only one who brought Torres to the NICU, but she was the only one that was punished for it. I can't lose her, Richard. Tell me what to do!"  
„You could move with her. You have family on the East Coast." Richard suggested „I heard you asked Mt. Sinai to hire you back."

Derek paused. Nothing Richard said made sense „Last time I heard you wouldn't allow me to terminate my contract prematurely."

„We'd have to find a replacement that is on the same level as you are." Webber nodded.

„I'm the best neurosurgeon in the country." Derek stated.

„Well, persuade the second best to come." Webber suggested.

„That's not my job." Derek looked at Richard in shock.

„It isn't mine either, I have a head of neurosurgery." Dr. Webber smiled  
„We just built a house here. Six weeks ago I thought I knew how our live would look like ten years from now. Right now, I just can't tell. It just feels like she's too far gone and there's no getting her back. Wouldn't you do everything to go back in time and make Ellis stay? Because that was on you. You told her to go." Derek spat out.

„What do you know about it?" Richard coughed and ordered another drink.

Derek looked at the bar tender and the club soda that Dr. Webber had ordered certainly wasn't virgin. „Enough, and I know a lot about how hard it is to leave your wife even though you are in a miserable marriage." Derek sighed.  
Dr. Webber nodded „Derek I'll see what I can do. I'll talk to the board, but I'm not too optimistic."  
„I lost my daughter, my wife and my son are going to be living on the other side of the country." Derek said „Don't see what you can do, do it."  
„What if she doesn't want to stay?" Richard wondered.  
„I'll find out if you got her her job back. Tell the board that they'll have to find a new neurosurgeon if she doesn't get her job back. I can't live hundreds of miles apart from my family. I'll hand in my letter of resignation until 4 tomorrow if she doesn't get her job back." Derek threatened.

„Don't make any rushed emotional decisions. The board doesn't…" Derek yelled, but Derek interrupted him.

„I called two board members to make sure…" Derek screamed at Richard „and they were sorry, but they said the board would allow 't you think I'm stupid."

„Not if I rule against them." Richard said. „Don't let emotions in the way."

„You are letting them. When it comes to Meredith Grey you make all kinds of emotional decisions." Derek said „You can't look at her, I get that, she reminds you of Ellis and you see all the things you missed out on, but I am looking at my infant son and feel that way and it's not fair to him or her or me. She made a mistake, but so have you and so have I, and we haven't been fired for might be too late for you, but it's not too late for me."

* * *

Cristina peeked through the window. She had never lost a patient like this before. The patient's wife was sitting at his bed side. He was hooked onto several machines and tubes were all over his body while she looked like she had been in a business meeting when they had called her „I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. You just have to let him go." Cristina said when she looked at them. Yesterday they had been fine.

„But he could wake up." The blonde wife told her. She was tiny, but she didn't look fragile, a little bit like a corporate version of Meredith.

„No, look at the EEG monitor, you can see a flat line. This line indicates that there's no brain activity. We did everything we could, but despite our best efforts…" Cristina began to explain for the fourth time, and this time the patient's wife interrupted her. „He's not going to wake up. He'll stay like this. If we keep him on the ventilator, he'll not get better – he won't wake up. The last time my husband kissed me is always going to be last night before he went to work."

Cristina nodded. „Yes, his vitals will get worse and first his blood sugar is going to rise which increases his insulin requirements, his urine output will decrease and then, he'll develop a mild liver dysfunction and possible other hematologic abnomalities. It's very hard to reverse once this process starts and once he enters stage three there will be significant coagulation abnormalities which means his blood will turn from a liquid to a gel. In stage 4…"

„He'll be dead." The wife said „I don't need you to tell me all those fancy medical words. He's going to die. Say it."

„He's going to die." Cristina nodded „You can decide if it's going to be a painful process or if he'll just go in peace."

„There's got to be something you can do…" the wife started again. Bargaining, Cristina thought to herself.

„I'm very sorry madam, there's nothing we can do. We did everything we could. I'll leave you with him until you have decided what to do." She said and left the room.

* * *

 _When do you throw in the towel? Admit that a lost cause is something just that? There comes a point where it all becomes too much. When we get too tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That's when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all._

* * *

Meredith and Carolyn were standing at JFK airport. Meredith looked at Christopher and the certainty that their ways would part temporarily „Goodbye little guy, your dad is going to pick you up soon. Remember to be a good boy. I love you. I'll always love you." She told him and handed him over to his grandmother.

„Meredith, you can always stay here." She said.

„No I can't. Mt. Sinai turned me down. I'll see what Hopkins says, they haven't called me yet." Meredith said even though she would accept 's offer. She knew Boston and sometimes it wasn't bad to go back to the places you knew.

Carolyn nodded and tried to conceal her disappointment „I'm sorry, but honey, Derek might take a while, but he always comes around. He'll be there once he's readdy. Goodbye Meredith and honey, you can call me any time you want."

„Thanks" Meredith said and walked away. She walked away from the life she had thought she never wanted. She was on her own now and it was what she knew how to do best, she thought to herself. She would be Dr. Burns now.


	30. Chapter 30

**_Happy New Year! Thanks for your reviews, guys! While you can't see them here and they are not posted, I can still read them via email, which I'm grateful for. I'll be quite busy at work for the next few weeks, so you are getting this update a little bit ahead of time! Hope you enjoy this update._**

 _Jody: The next few chapters are going to focus on how Meredith and Derek are doing on their own and Meredith will get to explore a relationship to someone she had never met._

 _CiaraM: Richard is still regretting his decision and is spiraling out of control. (Maybe things will get better once Meredith is gone). Derek and Meredith will find out who they are on their own and what's important to them. They'll challenge their own beliefs because their heart tells them something their brain doesn't want them to listen to, so there's going to be some inner conflict._

 _Guests: Thank you for your feedback!_

 _Sara: The carousel never stops turning. Meredith can't get off and she'll explore the most important relationship (pre Derek)._

 _Rita: Derek and Meredith have to find back to each other, back to longing for each other and don't they say 'Distance makes the heart grow fonder'. Meredith will learn how difficult her mother's decision to leave Seattle must have been and she'll understand that it wasn't brave, but an easy way out (eventually - after a few detours) so I hope you keep enjoying the twists and turns!_

 _Clarice: Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed my stories! Hope you enjoy Meredith's journey back to herself._

 _Kiley: Hope you keep enjoying this chapter!_

 _Patsy: Glad you liked the chapter! Christopher is stuck in the middle and Derek will find out what it's like if someone gets his family involved. Meredith knew what she was doing when she approached Carolyn in New York._

* * *

 ** _Chapter 30_**

 _Have you ever wondered how different you life would have been if you had been born in a different body, in a different home with different parents. And you end up thinking…not so different. You think I've been here, I've done that. But soon you are going to find out that everything is different._

It was 5.30 pm and tomorrow would be Meredith's first day at MassGen. It would be her first day at a new hospital in a city she had returned to after god knows how long and knew her secrets. This time she had more than one secret, they just kept pileing up. Nobody knew that she was Ellis Grey's daughter and nobody knew that she was married to Derek Shepherd. She looked at the buildings on the other side of the street.

Cambridge still looked the same, it hadn't changed since the day her mother had handed in her resignation after she had found her and one of her residents in the throws in an on call room. One of her not so fine moments Meredith thought to herself while she sat in ‚The Algiers Coffee House' at Harvard Square. The Algiers Coffee House had been a fixture in Cambridge for decades – probably longer than Meredith could think. Her mother had taken her to the café after her first day of school. It was still the same, among all the changes that have taken place all around Harvard Square. It was still a very charming old-world vibe. Locals and students were sitting around the octagonal Moroccan tables sipping tea by the pot, eating their middle eastern fare, and enjoying unique salads in a funky, laid-back atmosphere. Meredith felt like an astronaut on a space mission. She was the only human among all those aliens. Or was she the alien, she wondered to herself.

She starred at the cup in front of her. The coffee still was sensational, she had spent quite a few days here while ditching school. This had always been her refuge, it was where she had tasted the first beer and it's where she had told her mom that she was going to study medicine. It's where they had fought. She had packed her bags and had called Saddie. Not too long after this fight Ellis had called her and told her that she was diagnosed with Alzheimer. Meredith had returned home and everything had been different. The world famed surgeon had degenerated into a shell that wasn't able to recognize her own daughter. She had lived with her while Meredith was in med school. Ellis knew her way around Dartmouth so Meredith hoped she wouldn't get lost and when she was matched with Seattle Grace they both moved to Seattle. She had started to work and she had known nobody. She had been determined to keep her personal life and her professional life separate, which arguably hadn't quite worked out the way she wanted it to. She had gotten married to the head of neurosurgery, the sister she never knew she had was working at the same hospital and temporarily living under the same roof, her best friends were the residents in her year and she had found out that the Chief of surgery had fathered her halfsister. Seattle was behind her and she had to put Christopher and Derek behind her if she ever wanted to succeed. Tomorrow she wouldn't be the living reminder of anyone's bad memories, she wouldn't be following in anybody's footpath, she'd be Dr. Burns the resident transfer from Tacoma. Dr. Burns was nervous and the nervosity got to her stomach. Anything except coffee made her throw up easily these days.

* * *

When her alarm rang the next morning Meredith got up. The apartment was empty and almost unfurnished, but she wouldn't be here a lot anyway so she didn't mind. The emptiness of her apartment distracted her from the emptiness in her heart, but she had sworn herself to be strong. She'd be strong and confident and show everyone that she was destined to become a surgen. She had collected her name tag and signed all the papers with HR the day before and today she'd step into field again. MassGen had been where she had grown up.

She walked into the resident locker room, but nobody took too much notice or interest. She wondered if it was this mix of indifference and respect of privacy that had drawn her mother to come here. She was a nobody now, she'd have surgery and she'd be focused on surgery 24/7. She had hit the restart button, this time she'd start her residency the way she had originally intended it to go: not getting involved with anyone and focusing on the medicine. She attached her pager to her scrub pants and went to Dr. Avery's office like she had been told to do.

„Dr. Burns, I'm glad you joined us." Jackson's grandfather greeted her.

„I see Jackson talked to you." Meredith nodded. Dr. Burns - the name still sounded weird to her.

„He did, glad to have you here, Dr. Grey. Feels like yesterday that your late mother…" he started reminicing, but Meredith interrupted him „Thanks for hiring me and thanks for being..."

„You still have a period of probation, but according to Jackson you are good, so I guess you'll pass." Dr. Avery smiled „Dr. Geller requested you, but as you are not going by your name I asked him to wait a little. You've been on general a lot. Any wishes regarding your first placement?"

„Maybe not General, I saw that Dr. Sanders is the head of the department." Meredith smiled and hoped that Dr. Avery still remembered the circumstances of their last encounter.

„And given your history it might not be the best idea. I agree." He nodded and Meredith was relieved as she continued to listen to him „I guess you'll be happy with cardio. You haven't been on cardio too much from what I can see. We need to change that. Dr. Sawyer, our Chief resident is going to be here any minute. I told him that you transfered from Tacoma for personal reasons, Dr. Burns. You are the spitting image of your mother. Welcome to the game, Dr. Burns. It's a pity Jackson didn't decide to come with you."

„Well, he didn't get fired." Meredith sighed.

„Seattle Grace dropped to 12th in the rankings, he might want to have a look into transfering here again." He smiled „I called him this morning"

* * *

Everyone at Seattle Grace starred at the computer screen in disbelief. „12th? We dropped to 12? And we are demoted to a level 2 trauma center. Those people can't be serious! Do you know who did their residency in a teaching hospital in 12th place? Losers, I'm not a loser." Cristina said in shock.

„It's still in the top 20, that's pretty good." George tried to appease her.

„Mer got away on time, MassGen moved up to third place, Hopkins is on 1st and moved to the top 10 and where are we? 12th." Cristina sighed.

„Yeah, look at all the wonderful things she did to deserve that." Derek rolled his eyes. He hated her for leaving the sinking ship. He hated her for leaving their son with his mother. Every time he looked at a picture of him, he saw her. It was like he couldn't let her go. He'd pick up Christopher at the weekend.

„Maybe I could apply to Cleveland Clinic. They have an excellent cardio programme" Cristina tried to think about her options.

„It's humiliating. 12th place, I'm the best neurosurgeon in the country for Christ's sake." Derek sighed. He knew the board wanted to see him in twenty minutes, but he still was determined to accept the offer Mt. Sinai had made to him.

„My grandfather has been calling me three times… he probably wants me to move" Jackson rolled his eyes.

Teddy leaned over to Cristina „Is it me Yang? Did I not teach you …"

„No, you are the best teacher I ever had." Cristina said.

„Is Webber pissed? Because he looks pissed." George wondered. The Chief had stormed off after he had heard the news.

* * *

When Derek walked out of the meeting he was surprised about what just had happened. Before he had gone into the meeting, he had been determined to hand in his resignation, but now he had walked out of the room with a 20 million research budget to research degenerative nerve cells. He dialed Mark's number and went straight to voicemail.

He sighed, but five minutes later his phone rang „What's the matter Derek? Finally quit your job?" Mark wondered.

„No, signed an agreement in which my department receives the funds to research degenerative nerve cells." Derek explained. He couldn't remember how exactly this had happened, but he was holding the papers in his hands.

„You traded meredith for a research project" Mark summarized.

„I made sure she has a job when she comes back" Derek said. „There's a position for a research assistant. If Richard doesn't give her her job back, she can have this one."

„If she comes back" Mark corrected him „You don't know where she is and you certainly don't know if she comes back."

„Christopher is here" Derek tried to persuade himself „she'll come back and if she does, there's going to be a job waiting for her"

„and you'll figure everything out" Mark added.

* * *

Meredith walked up to her Chief resident. He turned around and began to smile. He liked what he saw. The tiny resident with the blonde eyes was a welcome change „Dr. Burns, I'm Dr. Sawyer, but you can call me Allen. All the residents are on a first name basis really." He smiled and winked at her „At least I'm on first name basis with all the beautiful residents."

Meredith almost rolled with her eyes, it's what Dr. Grey would have done, but Dr. Burns was bright and shiny and focused „Meredith, nice to meet you, Allen." She smiled and extended her hand for a hand shake.

„It's quite a step up from Tacoma to Mass. Gen." Allen Sawyer mentioned while he handed over the trauma protocol to her „How did that happen? You must have incredible credentials."

He winked at her, why did he wink? Was he thinking that she had slept with somebody? „I had to move and Mass Gen had an open spot, so I applied." She tried to ignore whatever he was implying.

„Good for you" he smiled „We moved up to 3 in the rankings."

„I didn't realize it was that time of the year." Meredith answered. It was true, with everything that was going on she hadn't thought about ratings at all.

„Well, if you are working in Tacoma I guess you are not too interested in ratings anyway." He dismissed the hospital's reputation. He looked at his list and told her „According to my list you are with Dr. Keller and his fellow Dr. Pierce. He's demanding and she's a little perky, but they are nice to work with. I'm going to show you everything."

* * *

Liz Shepherd was holding her brother's son when she walked into Seattle Grace. She hated to fly, but to bring Christopher back to his daddy was a good reason to get into a plane. „Excuse me, where can I find Dr. Shepherd?" she asked at the information desk where Cristina Yang was waiting.

„Just follow the path of arrogance and self rightneous." She rolled her eyes and pointed to the neurosurgical examination room next to Derek's office „He should be over there." When she looked up she saw Christopher and Liz „Oh, I met you, you are one of his sisters! Hey Christopher, where's Mer?" If Christopher was here, she had to be somewhere.

„She left him with mom. I'm off, so I decided to take Christopher back to his dad and to check on my brother. What has he done this time?" she asked „I know you and Meredith are friends."

"This time?" Cristina smiled.

„Well, something must have happened!" Liz insisted.

„Ask him! I'm not …" Cristina said, but Derek who had just walked out of his office interrupted her. „Liz, what… Christopher? What are you doing here? I thought he was in New York"

„Mom called, Meredith left him with her, she wanted you to have him when she starts with her new job. He missed you." Liz said. „Haven't you, little guy?"

Derek approached her quickly. „Hey, little buddy, how are you?" He hugged and kissed his son.

„That's what I meant to ask you! What happened?" Liz wondered.

„She left." Was all Derek told her.

„Derek! Come on! Mom send me here to check on her favorite child! So tell me!" Liz insisted.

„Can we talk about this over lunch?" Derek wondered.

„Are we actually going to talk about this over lunch? I'm not going to leave Derek, so don't play ‚ my surgery is running late' on me!" Liz told her brother.

„Fine, see you at 1pm." He smiled.

* * *

Meredith and the Chief resident Allen Sawyer walked around the hospital. It was one of his responsibilities as Chief resident to show mid semester transfers how to find their way around to the hospital. While working down the halls Meredith noticed that nobody was looking at her, nobody was talking about her and nobody knew her which was a nice thing for a change. She didn't even mind that Allen was hitting on her – at least until he asked her out for a drink. „Before I leave you to your attending now, can I ask you out for a drink. We usually go to the bar across the street after our shift."

„No thanks." Meredith said firmly. Holding on to the map of the surgical wing. She had no intention of becoming friends with anyone here. It'd be just surgery from now on. Surgery was the one thing were she didn't screw up.

„Are you afraid we are mass murderers?" Allen joked and looked at her. He was a 5th year and like any other WASP resident he was just too full of himself, Meredith thought to herself. His wavy brown hair and his manicured hands made her cringe, but as he was her boss she decided to stay polite and to open up to him.

„No, I'm sure you are nice people, but in tacoma we've been way too close, hell, I even invited all of them to live in my house with me and then a sister I never knew I had turned up and … nevermind." She paused and walked away after saying „Thank you for the offer, but I still have to unpack a few boxes."

Allen followed her outside the locker room „Are you afraid this is going to happen again? The sister thing. How many sister you don't know about do you have?"

„More than you can imagine." Meredith sighed and kept walking, but Allen still followed her.

„Did something bad happen between you and your friends?" Allen wondered in a nonchalant fashion.

„No." Meredith answered truthfully yet suggesting that she didn't really want to talk to each other. She didn't want to talk to him, but he kept insisting. God, she hated guys that kept insisting that they just had to meet her.

„Well, why don't you give us a chance?" Allen asked while she tried to walk away faster, but he still kept up „We are not too bad, I'll show you where you can find Dr. Keller if you do."

„I guess, I'll have to find him myself." Meredith smiled and walked away. It couldn't be too hard, after all she had been here before.

* * *

The residents were surprised about the latest gossip that had spread around the hospital after Liz' arrival. „She just left him with Derek's mom? That doesn't sound like Meredith" George said at the lunch table.

„It's not like she left him on the street, she's brought him somewhere where she knew he would be safe. She needs time to breathe and she…" Cristina tried to explain, but George interrupted her.

„Can't do it while he is around?" he asked her „Callie is the same. She's struggling to be around her"

„Callie left Sofia with you. But she has been hit by a car that's hardly the same." Alex said „Mer just wants a clean slate, she hasn't replied to any of my calls. She told me to leave her alone"

„Maybe she just doesn't want to talk to you." Cristina suggested.

„Has she been talking to you? Do you know where she is?" Lexie wondered. Meredith hadn't called her since the day of her interview at Mt. Sinai.

„Yang knows everything and Meredith and her used to be joined at the hips for all I heard." Jackson smiled. He knew that Cristina didn't know where Meredith was.

„At least before Christopher was born." George suggested. Meredith and Cristina had a different focus after Christopher was born.

„Pretty boy is smart." Cristina smiled.

„And pretty boy knows where she is too because he spend hours to persuade his grandfather of accepting her" Jackson smiled.

„She went to Boston?" Alex asked surprised „She went to Boston and she abandoned her child?"

* * *

The Cardio wing in MassGen was larger than the entire surgical unit at Seattle Grace. Ellis had spent quite a few hours in this part of the hospital. She checked the offices and found Dr. Keller and a black resident discussing their latest cases „Dr. Keller, I'm on your service." She said and knocked on the open door.

„Hello Dr. Burns. Dr. Avery told me you'd be here. This fine lady is Dr. Pierce." The surgeon introduced himself and his 5th year resident.

„We met." Maggie said „Hello."

„I walked into her when I was here for the interview." Meredith smiled „Nice to see you."

„Ready for rounds, Dr. Burns? Dr. Pierce was about to show me the impecable work she has done on a atrium repair." He smiled and Maggie picked up the charts and put them into Meredith's hands „Let's see what they taught you. Have you been on cardio rotation?"

„Honestly, not in a while." Meredith admitted. Cardio had always been Cristina's area of interest. „I've been on plastics, on peds, on neuro and on general and a little bit of trauma now and then. Cardio was never really in the picture. I think I did the minimum hours."

„That's a pity, our cardio department is excellent." The surgeon said while looking at the chart of the first patient they were about to see „The heart is such a vital organ. What can you tell me about a mitral valve repair?"

„The procedure is the best option for nearly all patient with a leaking mitral valve and for many with a narrowed mitral valve." Meredith worked through the list of memorized details „It provides better chances of long term survival, better preservation of heart function, lower risks of complications and usually eliminated the need for long term use of anticoagulants compared to a replacement."

„What about the incision?" the surgeon continued to quiz her.

„2-3 inches on the right side of the chest for normal procedures. If it can be done with a surgical robot you can limit it to a 1 inch incision." Meredith smiled. Cristina had trained the procedure with the surgical robot while she had trained several general procedures.

„And I'm sure you only ever heard of that because Tacoma certainly doesn't have a robot." Maggie mumbled.

„I got certified. Not for cardio procedures, but for general surgery." Meredith smiled back at her. She wasn't a dud and she wanted to prove herself.

„Well, let's change that, you can scrub in with me, Dr. Burns." Dr. Keller smiled „I'm going to do a endoscopic valve repair this afternoon and I want you to assist. We can sign you up for the certification course after that."

„The robot is going to assist. She'll just stand there." Maggie diminished her contribution.

„And so will you." Dr. Keller put her into her place. „You'll stand there and watch"

* * *

Liz was waiting for Derek in the cafeteria. She had been up at daycare of two hours while he was coiling an aneurysm and had put Christopher to bed. He had been up since 5am of Seattle time. She looked at the coffee in front of her when he finally made his way to her table. „So, what's the story, Derek? What sent Meredith on a …"

„That's something you might want to ask Meredith" Derek suggested „I'm not the one that jepardized our adoption. I haven't lied to the social worker, I haven't been the one that …"

„Derek, you've always been stubborn. Mom said Meredith seemed… well… confused… like she was running away from her problem…" Liz said „and Robert told me they didn't offer her a position because you put in an application two hours earlier. Why do you want to move back?"

„Well, she could apologize." Derek suggested „and I know she's working on the East coast, that's why I wanted to move"

„She won't apologize." Lexie who had eavesdropped on the conversation interrupted him „She tried to apologize and she's sorry, but you wouldn't let her…"

„Who are you?" Liz wondered.

„Meredith's sister."

„Hey, I'm…" Lizzie tried to introduced herself.

„Lizzie, I know you, we decorated the function room together and I brought cupcakes." Lexie said.

„Oh, that's right. You look different…" Liz nodded.

„with a scrub cap, I know." Lexie smiled.

„So what has my brother been doing?" Lizzie asked Meredith sister „Sit down next to me"

„I don't know, he wasn't here last week." Lexie said innocently and looked uncomfortable at Derek.

„Tell me about this, brother, where did you go?" Lizzie glanced at Derek „Yet another woman we have to find out about."

„I went to L.A." he answered.

„So you and Mark went out for a drink." Liz smiled.

„I did all the drinking." Derek laughed.

„So can I tell mom that you are going to come to your senses soon and call her?" Liz wondered.

„You can tell mom that I'll call Meredith." Derek smiled. He hadn't promised her to call her immediately, so he wasn't lying.

* * *

A little while later Derek found himself in his OR. Meredith and his 5th year resident knew how to prepare it, but their substitutes seemed clueless. „I need three towels there, not two, not one, three, Lexie. How many times do I have to tell you how I like my OR to be prepped?" he shouted at Lexie.

„I'll try to tell the OR nurse …" Lexie said and redistributed the towels.

„What's the matter, Derek?" Owen looked up and wondered.

„Grey women driving me crazy, I need a sign from the universe that it's right to walk away, to move on, to breathe" Derek said.

Lexie was furious. How dared he, she thought. „Maybe you should get a sign from the universe that Meredith is the one, you've been miserable and unbearable ever since she left, Dr. Shepherd. Respectfully. I'm off doing your post op now, so … good luck.." she smiled and left the OR.

„What about the surgery?" Derek wondered.

„Post op." Lexie explained.

„Are the residents refusing to be in my OR?" Derek looked at Owen who looked at him and nodded.

„Well, you've been unbearable and they are trying to get out of your path." The trauma surgeon laughed

„My mom wants me to call Meredith. She send my sister to harass me into calling her." Derek said „All my life I've been listening to women, but she's right to do so… I keep thinking she's here. I look for her in everyone. I see her in everyone. I thought I could live without her…" Ever since Christopher had returned he kept thinking that Meredith was just around the corner. Even though he had no clue what to tell her, he wanted to hear her voice.

„… but you can't." Owen said. „And you want to hold onto her, but she's gone and you know it's what is best for her and that you shouldn't hold her back."

„And she deserves a new start, she deserves the chance to become the excellent surgeon she's going to be and Richard refuses to give her her job back and I know that she's right where she's supposed to be… and maybe it's easier for all of us." Derek said. „I just wish I wasn't feeling like this"

„Are you thinking about her when you go to bed?" Owen wondered.

„I keep thinking about her every waking moment. I thought it was because I wanted to know where Christopher is, but he's back and I'm still thinking about her." Derek sighed.

„Well, in that case it's not easier." Owen suggested „Maybe you shouldn't try to forget her."

* * *

The drop in the rating had a huge impact on everyone at Seattle Grace. Residency guidelines were revised, new classroom trainings introduced and ambulances were taking patients to Seattle Pres. Now and most of the residents missed the incoming traumas. George and Alex were waiting in the pit and looked at a low number of non surgical cases fighting over who'd take out whose appendix first. Standard procedures were the only surgeries that were scheduled today and as there were no traumas it was a slow day and a small board. Bypasses had never been something Teddy Altman felt passionate about. Most of her patients had been careless with their lives. The had eaten too much junk food, they hadn't done enough exercise.

„Down to twelveth." Cristina sighed. She was sitting on a gurney and her mentor Teddy Altman was sitting next to her. Both women were bored out of their minds.

„Sucks" Teddy replied.

„I never imagined doing my residency at a number 12 hospital. I have a phd and a.." Cristina complained.

„Yang, it's not about the rating, it's about your skills" Teddy said „You don't quit just because people tell you you are twelveth. You keep working until you know you're number one"

„He didn't have to die." Cristina said. „If we had used the procedure you suggested, he…"

„We did everything we could." Teddy smiled. „Sometimes that's all we can do."

„I called a neurosurgeon at Hopkins." Jackson said „She might know a way to get him back."

* * *

Meredith was standing inside the OR and on her very first day at MassGen she got to perform a procedure with the department head. She was focused, probably too focused, because Dr. Springer smiled and looked at her after he had positioned the patient and checked the markings „Come on, Burns, don't be so serious, tell me a joke." He smirked. She couldn't see his mouth, but the features that weren't hidden by a mask suggested that he must have been smiling.

Meredith looked up at the light that illuminated the OR. She didn't know a lot of jokes and she wasn't used to telling them. „Okay, here's one my mom used to tell." She smiled „The hospital administrator asked the patient „Do you mind telling me why you ran away from the operating room?" „Because the nurse said, Don't be afraid! An appendectomy is quite simple." „So.." „So?" exclaimed the man. „She was talking to the doctor.""

The nurses exchanged weird looks and Meredith wondered why. „The last time I heard that joke Ellis Grey told it. Did you know her?" Dr. Keller wondered.

„Yeah, I'm …" Meredith stopped herself, she wasn't her daughter here, she was Dr. Burns so she came up with „I'm familiar with her mother. I mean, method, sorry. Who didn't know her? She invented the Grey method."

„She was a remarkable woman." Dr. Keller nodded. Maggie looked at Meredith and when Meredith looked at Maggie she turned her eyes away quickly. She focused on the monitor. Maggie was working with the robot until Dr. Keller interrupted her.

„Dr. Pierce, what are you doing there?" Dr. Keller wondered.

„Oh my god, sorry. I'm so sorry." She apologized. While focusing on Meredith she had almost perforated the tissue.

„Get out of my OR and hand over everything to Dr. Burns. I thought you couldn't screw up a robot-assisted surgery, but apparently I was wrong." Dr. Keller shouted „Dr. Burns, I want to see what the doctors in Tacoma taught you."

Meredith followed his instructions, step by step she managed to finish the procedure „And just like that, like magic, the heart gets fixed, don't you wish it was as easy with all the heart ache we have to go through." Dr. Keller smiled when an intern started to close the patient.

„Yeah." Meredith smiled and went into the scrub room. „Thank you"

* * *

Callie was sitting in her room like any other day. She knew every inch of the wallpaper and every crack on the ground. She was almost thrilled when Arizona walked in with a large suitcase „Let's go, we'll take you home" she smiled and opened up Callie's closet. Throughout the past few weeks George and Arizona had brought more and more personal belongings to Callie's room.

„Already?" Callie wondered. While she felt better physically, she had never considered the possibility that she'd leave the hospital still feeling the way she did.

„Yes, you can walk again and grab stuff and you can do the rest from home. It's going to be you, me and Sofia. I already ordered a new couch and I decorated the living room." Arizona said while throwing everything into the suitcase.

„You decorated it?" Callie wondered. She had been to Arizona's old apartment before she had went to Africa, but she had yet to see her new condo.

„Well, it's not your kind of decorating, I haven't recreated the bat cave." Arizona joked. Callie liked colours like red and black which Arizona wasn't too fond of.

„It'll be fine, it's ours. I've been there before" Callie smiled. „I lived with George, I can get used to it."

* * *

After getting out of surgery Meredith went to the resident locker room. She dialed a number and hoped the person on the other side would answer. „Derek? It's Meredith." She said and smiled when she heard the voice on the other side.

„What's the matter?" he asked.

„I fixed a heart today and … I wanted to talk." Meredith said. She had fixed a heart and was hoping he was ready, but he hung up. She bit her lips and dialed again.

When he answered for the second time she blarred out „Come on, Derek. You can't avoid me forever. This is childish and ridiculous, you can't hide from me."

„I can for as long as I want to, you are the one that ran away, you were the one that didn't tell me anything for weeks." Derek yelled. „Can't you at least tell me where you are?"

„Not as long as you are not willing to talk – to really talk." Meredith said „We have a few things to figure out and I don't want to figure them out before both of us are ready." She paused for a second while looking at the family photo that was attached to the locker door next to hers „I love you Derek and I'm trying very hard not to fall apart here."

„I don't know if I can love you, Meredith. You lied to a social worker and you got fired, Meredith. You jeapardize the adoption and you lied about it." Derek said.

„I know Derek, I'm just a horrible, horrible person in your eyes, but I did this for Callie." Meredith smiled

Derek got angry again even though he was happy to hear her voice. „It was wrong Meredith, Bailey told you not to do it and not talking to me it's..."

„Not in my eyes, there isn't always a right and wrong Derek, it's not that simple." Meredith interrupted him again „And you applied to Mt. Sinai, Liz's husband told me, so don't you tell me something about not talking to one another. You haven't told me that you were going to do it either."

„I'm going to hang up now or I'm going to say things I regret saying." Derek said and hung up.

„Yeah, quit, just quit." Meredith cursed at her phone and noticed that there was somebody who had walked up to her „Dr. Pierce what do you want?"

„I know you are pretty and blonde and you have all this, my dad and your mom worked together going on, but you can't do this." Dr. Pierce yelled at her.

„What did I do?" Meredith wondered.

„All those light hearted joking that gets you surgeries, you don't know what it's like to work for things, you don't know what it's like if your family doesn't get your fascination for medicine and a fiance that just doesn't get what you need or want or why you do things" Maggie kept rambling.

„You are rambling. Maggie, I'm only going to say this once, but you don't know me. My mother never wanted me to be a surgeon, she never supported my decision to become a surgeon and believe me, I do know what it's like if your partner doesn't get you. So goodbye, Dr. Pierce, I have a patient in post op." Meredith smiled, put her phone away and walked out of the room. Dr. Grey would have made a scene, Dr. Burns was calm and forgiving and professional.

Maggie was sitting in one of the trauma rooms and looked upset. Dr. Keller had left a couple of charts with her and the patient Maggie was observing was one of the patients Meredith was supposed to check on. Meredith remained in the hall for a while and looked at the charts.

„Come in" Maggie smiled and offered Meredith the seat next to her.

„Are you sure? We don't have to do that thing." Meredith said without sitting down next to her.

„What thing?" Maggie wondered.

„That thing were I say something and then you say something and than be both hug" Meredith answered.

„You don't have to say anything, but I'm saying something." Maggie said and Meredith said down next to her „I'm sorry. I was jealous and you are new here so instead of being helpful and welcoming I wasn't."

„It's okay, you are going to be his fellow and I'm only a resident – a third year that isn't even allowed to specialise yet." Meredith said. She had witnessed worse attempts to get ahead of another resident.

„I sat here every night for the past 7 days." Maggie said after a short moment of silence.

Meredith looked at her. „Why? Is it because of your fiance?" Meredith asked. On their tour around the hospital Allen had gossiped about Maggie's relationship.

„How do you know about that?" Maggie looked at her.

„People are talking." Meredith smiled.

„About me?" Maggie nodded „Sawyer?" It wasn't the first time he spread rumours about her.

„Yeah" Meredith's nod confirmed Maggie's suspision.

„I hate that douche." Maggie said „I hate him, he's harassing me ever since intern year and I… I didn't stand up to him long enough."

„I'm not to fond of him either" Meredith said and got up from her seat. „but he coerced me into going out for a drink with him and his friends."

„I broke up with my fiance and if I go home and pack my bags I'm afraid the thing becomes real" Maggie said and Meredith sat back down. It seemed to her that the black woman just needed someone to talk.

„So you just sit here and watch him?" Meredith asked without judging, the question almost sounded like a statement.

„I resucitated him four times. I paged the OR twice and fixed the bleeders after he had crashed." Maggie said „He needs me and I need him. What are you doing?"

Meredith had gotten up from her seat and looked at the patient's pupilar reflexes. „Did you have him on blood thinners?" Meredith asked while performing the light test.

„Yes." Maggie answered.

„Well page, neuro and order a head CT." Meredith ordered her „His pupils are blown and I think there might be a bleed."

„Are you sure?" Maggie wondered.

„Yes Dr. Pierce. Stiff neck, dropping eylids, light sensitivity." Meredith confirmed and described what she was observing.

„Alright, let's page Dr. Springer." Maggie jumped up and paged the attending.

They both scrubbed in and assisted as Dr. Springer fixed the bleed. He went in blind and Meredith looked at the screens. „Good call, Dr. Pierce" he complimented her „You caught it early enough to fix it"

„Actually, Dr. Burns caught it." Maggie admitted.

„Well, welcome to . Dr. Burns, I looked at your records, they were impecable and it seems like you are as good as your file suggests you are" he looked up from the screen. „I hope I'll see you around."

* * *

Lizzie had invited Lexie for dinner. It was an early dinner, but Liz was still living on New York time, so her body felt several hours ahead which made it perfect dinner time for her. She, her brother and her brother's sister-in-law were in the kitchen of Derek's house. It looked like a mess and Lexie and Liz exchanged a shocked look when they walked in. While Derek was preparing dinner, she tried to talk to him.

„You've been like this ever since dad died. And dad died because he was stubborn – because he insisted on keeping that damn watch" Liz said. It was true, their father had been shot because he had insisted on keeping the watch his wife had bought him for their anniversary. Derek looked down at his plate and whispered „I thought Kathleen was the shrink in the family."

„Derek, have a little bit of faith in everything and let go." Liz smiled. „Meredith cares about you, she wouldn't have left Christopher for you, if she didn't."

„I blame myself, I should have… I could have saved him." Derek said.

„You blame yourself for everything. Dad, Amy, …" Liz started a list of his own personal failures.

„Oh, I don't blame myself here, it's totally Meredith's fault." Derek said

Lizzie challenged him. She was closest of age to Derek and she had been fighting for as long as she could remember. „Maybe it's nobody's fault."

„How are the kids?" Derek tried to distract her.

„They are dying to see their uncle Derek again. You should come over for a visit – you, Christopher and Meredith – and Zola once you got her back." Lizzie said. She was still an optimist.

„How can we get her back if we are like this?" Derek looked at her. His eyes were filled with tears.

„You don't, but you can get her back if you work on getting everything back to the way things were. Why do you love her?" Liz wondered.

„Because she's caring and compassionate and…" Derek started to list all her positive qualities.

„Has she changed?" Liz wondered.

„No." Derek looked at his sister „She cares too much, she cares too much for the people she loves."

„Fly to her, make things right." Lizzie said „This isn't over."

„I still don't know where she is." Derek said and sat down next to her.

„You know her, you know where she is. You know where you have to look for her" Lizzie smiled.

* * *

In the scrub room Meredith washed her hands when Dr. Springer came into the room „Dr. Burns, do you have a minute." He wondered.

Meredith looked up and smiled „Sure. What do you want?"

„I'm still looking for a resident who is going to help me with a research project. I'm working on it with a neurosurgeon across the country, he called me today that they boosted his budget and some of the work we'd usually process together started to pile up throughout the past three weeks." He offered her. Her first few days had been better than expected – at least so far.

„I don't think I have the experience or the time, it's my first week at the hospital and I'm still." Meredith declined his offered. She had too much going on in her life to take on a task like this.

„You're right, I guess I'll have to keep looking." He smiled and threw his gloves into the bin.

Maggie walked into the room „Why did you turn this down?" she wondered.

„He needs someone who is completely focused, I'm not." Meredith admitted.

„Well, newbie you have to reinvent yourself, every break up and every screw up are new opportunities to reinvent yourself." Maggie smiled.

„are we talking about your ex fiance here?" Meredith looked at her and left the room. A neuro project wasn't the project she needed to get over Derek. It was time to get changed. Her first shift was over. Nobody had died, today had been okay.

* * *

While she walked through the lobby her phone rang, she looked at the caller ID hoping it was Derek, but it was another person from Seattle.

„Derek is driving me crazy, you have to come back." Lexie begged her „I mean, since Lizzie came here to drop off Christopher he's an ass. He called me last night because he couldn't handle him, at least that what he said and this morning, he's gone and I'm here with Christopher."

Meredith looked at her phone „Where is he? You don't think he'd come here, would you?"

„Have you told him where you work because I didn't?" Lexie wondered. No, he couldn't have possibly found out where she was.

„No, I'm not ready to see him plus the last time I called him he basically hung up on me." Meredith replied.

„You talked to him?" Lexie wondered.

„I wouldn't call it talking." Meredith admitted

„So what is going to happen?" Lexie wondered.

„He asked me to get a lawyer last week – to sort things out - and I still haven't called my lawyer." Meredith said „I mean I should call my lawyer, we are getting divorced and someone has to get custody of Chrissy. I mean I still have the divorce papers my lawyer drew up after we got married, but a lot changed after that. We have a child and a house and… I hope everything turns around, but I'm losing hope."

„When did you draw up papers before?" Lexie wondered. She hadn't been around when Derek had arrived and she didn't know the stories.

„After we got married and Derek turned up in Seattle." Meredith said „Before you turned up. He gave me the courage to come over to your parent's house for dinner."

„You didn't get a divorce when you had no reason to stay together, no history, no obligation. Doesn't that mean something?" Lexie wondered.

„We've been married for 780 days, I can't sign the papers without talking to him one last time, I look at our pictures, I like them – even our wedding picture where I throw up in a palm tree. We had our bumps in the road before." Meredith bit her lips.

„And this one soon shall pass, I mean… I hope it will. I miss you Mer." She heard Lexie say at the other side of the line.

„I miss you too Lexie. Boston isn't Seattle." Meredith smiled „I'm scared Lexie. I'm scared to call him again."

„If you can't beat the fear, just do it scared." Lexie tried to cheer her up „When are you going to tell him where you are?"

„When he's ready. Thanks, sis." She smiled.

„Dr. Sawyer. What do you want?" Meredith turned around after she had hung up on Lexie.

„Call me Allen. I heard your little phone call with your sister." He smiled.

„How much of that did you hear?" she wondered.

„The part where you said Boston isn't Seattle. I thought you were from Tacoma." He questioned her.

„Tacoma and Seattle are pretty close." Meredith smiled and walked on.

„Anyway, if you are still up for it, we are having drinks in the Skule Inn now." He suggested and offered to take her arm.

„I can't." she insisted and walked on.

„Why? Your boxes can wait until tomorrow, don't tell me your married and I lost all my chances on becoming your soul mate." Allen joked.

Usually Derek would make this kind of joke and for a second Meredith was overwhelmed and all she managed say way „Ahm."

„Come on Burns, don't be a bore." He teased her. Meredith rolled her eyes. She knew that professionally he could make her live a living hell, so she nodded. Maybe he'd lose interest once she gave in. Sloan had taught her that saying ‚No' was the most certain way to keep somebody interested. Maybe a ‚Yes' would be less detrimental to her career.

* * *

After dinner Lexie and Derek drove back to the city. They were paged to perform an emergency craniotomy on the victim of a traffic accident. By the time they got out there wasn't much point in leaving the hospital before the start of their regular shift, so they decided to check on the brain dead patient Yang had treated the day before.

„Cristina told me that the family wants to turn off life support" Lexie said while she observed Derek who was starring at the patient.

„It's wrong, he has a chance, they should hold onto that chance" Derek insisted.

„Derek, it's their decision, but if you want to feel better about yourself, maybe you should call Meredith and talk to her." Lexie suggested „This patient is not your sign, there are no signs in the universe, there's just what we choose."

„Have you talked to Meredith since she went away?" he wondered.

She smiled „Yes, we talked and she doesn't want a divorce because she loves you and I think you love her."

„Sometimes love isn't enough." He suggested.

„Love is always enough." Lexie smiled „During her intern year Mer had a patient, she told me about her once. There was a train accident and two patients were struck by the same pole. They brought them in together and they took them to CT. They found out that the girl's spine was crushed completely and that she wouldn't make it. They knew who ever they moved off the pole first would die… they were waiting for the man's wife and the girl's fiance to arrive, but their plane was late and they had to start. The girl gave Meredith a message – in case she wouldn't make it out of surgery – do you know what she said?"

„If love was enough, she'd still be there. I remember the story. Meredith and I are talking about our patients." Derek nodded.

„What would you do if she got in an accident and they'd call you and you wouldn't get to be there on time? What would you do if it happened today? Would you want things to end so badly between you?" Lexie wondered

„She calls before Christopher goes to bed, she sings a song for him and I'm slowly getting used to the fact that she isn't here, that I won't see her face if I walk around that corner, that there's no lavender scent when I walk into the bath room, I almost bought her conditioner just to…" he began to ramble and as he saw a smile appearing on Lexie's face he paused „nevermind, I'm not angry anymore at least not as angry as I used to be. I just feel empty."

„You'd want things to be good between you, so just call her." Lexie said.

* * *

The Skule Inn was a little Irish Pub a few streets away from the hospital. Meredith had been here before and the place hadn't changed a lot. The other residents were sitting at the bar when she and Allen arrived. They sat down and everyone except Meredith ordered a drink. She stuck to water because she felt a little dizzy after a long shift. „You are boring, Burns" one of the other residents said „You should be fun and have a beer."

„I used to be fun, very funny" Meredith smiled.

„You putting Pierce into her place was fun. I've never seen anyone talk to her like that." Allen smiled „She's always been Dr. Keller's favorite. And Sanders, you are lucky you haven't been on General yet. Sanders is an ass, he kicked me out of surgery today because I didn't show enough enthusiasm"

Another girl who was already a little bit tipsy added „Pierce is weird. I heard her boyfriend proposed and then she told him something absolutely horrible and he dumbed her."

„I used to be so much fun. But then the boys game with their stupid boy penises and ruined me." Meredith mumbled to herself.

„So what's your story, Burns?" Allen looked at her.

Oh, Christ she had been there before „I don't have a story, I'm just a girl in a bar." Derek used that line.

„I'm just a guy in a bar." Allen replied. More like ass in a bar she thought to herself.

„I'm not going to fall for this, if you are trying to pick me up, this is the lamest pick up line in the history of the planet." Meredith smiled. This pickup line only worked one

„Allen likes lame pick up lines." The girl next to her laughed „Come on, let's have another tequila, you can see this as your initiation to ."

„Fine, I'll stay, but I won't drink, I have work in the morning." Meredith said „And I'm sort of tired. I… have to go to the toiliet"

* * *

So why are you here? What's so different? What's changed? My answer is you. The thing's that changed is you.

* * *

Meredith had been away when her phone started to ring. Allen looked at her phone and hesitated for a moment. When Meredith came back after he had just hung up. The guy on the other side had asked him who he was and why he was answering Meredith's phone. ,

„Why are you answering my phone?" Meredith yelled and took her phone out of his hands.

„It rang… I just…" he tried to explain.

„Who was it?" she asked.

„The tag said „McDreamy"" he said and flirtatiously wondered „Who am I? I think I'm very sexy. How about McSexy?"

Meredith didn't really listen to what he was telling her „It was definitely McDreamy?" He nodded. She sighed. „Crap. I have to go." Dr. Grey's way of getting in trouble had followed Dr. Burns to Boston, sleeping with inappropiate men wasn't an option for her though.


	31. Chapter 31

So, here's a short update for you. I've been working for 59 hours this week, so I didn't get much done. I hope you enjoy it!

Shelley: This little phone call is going to take a while to unfold his full impact. And I agree, Allen Sawyer isn't going to be Mer's favorite person.

Susan: I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Clarice: I agree about the last bit, Mer has to find out more about herself before she is ready to face Derek. But she might not get the time she needs ;) Glad you enjoy reading the story!

Charlotte: Might be a while until Derek hops on a plane, but you'll see him (and a few other visitors) at MassGen. Meredith's can't leave her old life behind as easily as she might have thought.

Melanie: Hope you enjoy this update =). Derek will be jealous, but it'll help him realize what he wants.

Patsy: You are on to something. Thanks for the review!

* * *

Chapter 31

 _Today will be different. It has to be. I will smile, and it will be believable. My smile will say, ‚I'm fine, thank you. Yes, I feel much better.' I will start fresh, be someone new. It's the only way I'll make it through. Positive thinking. - It's bullshit. When everything is about to fall apart, don't kid yourself, it will. Some injuries are too severe to be fixed and some secrets have a way of revealing themselves._

Callie sat in her living room. Whenever Arizona was working she just sat there and starred at the wall. She usually sat there, she didn't move, she couldn't. She had no drive to move. Even though she could, the pain in her abdominal area and her legs would still remind her of everything that had happened to her. They still hadn't found the person that was responsible for all her pain and at this stage she was sure, they never would. It was just something that happened and for a while people pitied you and expected you to move on from, but Callie couldn't. She was doing her physical therapy exercises for her hands. It was something she could do without looking at what she was doing – her brain knew what it was doing again. While she let a little ball roll from one hand to the other, she heard Sofia. She was crying. She was crying a lot in fact and Callie had no desire to make her stop. She just starred at the bricks behind the television. „Shut up!" she yelled and remained sitting on the couch. „Shut up" Sofia didn't listen, but kept crying. First it was five minutes and Callie kept starring at the wall, but Sofia kept crying and five minutes turned into fifteen. After twenty minutes tears started to build up in her eyes and she yelled „Goddamit" while she got up. She walked into the nursery. Arizona and George had painted it in a shade of pink. A colour she had always hated with passion. She looked at the crying orphan. She must be hungry she thought and picked her up. Sofia kept crying on her arm and Callie began to cry „Why can't I love you? Why can't I hold you?" she asked her baby. She put her back into her bed and hunkered down crying. She slowly let herself down to the ground. Her physical therapist would have been impressed, a psychologist wouldn't. She cried. „It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to be healthy and I was supposed to love you." They had told her she'd get better one day at a time, but she didn't feel like she'd ever feel good on her own again.

* * *

Meredith woke up in an apartment she had never seen before and Allen was looking at her. Had he drugged her? From one second to the next she went from sleepy to focused. „Where am I? How did I get here?" she wondered when Allen walked into the living room.

„You fainted after you ran out of the bar." He said. „We brought you here. Sara checked on you throughout the night. So who was the guy that made you storm out of the bar? You never mentioned an ex."

„I'm not talking to you about this. I hardly know you" Meredith said „This is none of your business and god, this is humiliating on so many levels" She started to ramble „Boston was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be different. The last time I woke up in a stranger's room I had married the guy; can you imagine that?"

Allen looked at her thinking she was cute when she rambled like this. „Well it's good I'm not that guy. Not married, see, no ring." He laughed „By the way, a guy called, but hung up after I answered your phone. I hope you remember." Meredith looked at her phone. She did remember. Yeah, Derek had called her and Allen had answered. She needed to call him and explain what had happened. She knew what he must have been thinking „I made coffee, wait." Allen insisted. Meredith looked around her and picked up every personal item she could see and walked to the door.

„I need to call somebody." Meredith said getting out of the apartment, but once she got to the elevator she noticed that she needed a key card to use it. By the time she was looking for the stairs Allen had caught up with her.

„Who's the guy?" he wondered.

„Which part of not talking did you not understand." She smiled and tried to get to the stair case.

„Well I could tell everyone that you were naked on my couch, but I don't." Allen smiled „So whom did I talk to?"

„My husband" Meredith spat out. She had met Allen Sawyer yesterday and she already hated him. She had seldom met someone that brought up so strong feelings in her.

„You are married? And you call him McDreamy?" he laughed.

„Were or are, I'm not sure. It's complicated. I don't want to talk about it." she said.

„Want to talk about what happened? I'm sure tequila had a part in that story after all you threw up after your first." he teased her „and passed out"

„No, tequila had absolutely no part in that story, well in the beginning it did, but not so much in the end." Meredith rambled and stopped „It was a new me and I'm my old me again. God, I feel nauseous… how much did I drink last night?"

„Nothing" Allen said „Break up and the whole reinvent yourself, better yourself thing, I don't get why chicks are so much into it? It wasn't that much, one shot, maybe two, but actually I'm pretty sure you went to the toilet before the first, I don't know I'm not your babysitter."

„We didn't break up." Meredith said.

„Yet you are here and he is in Tacoma." Allen looked at her. „That gives long distance a new meaning."

„Seattle actually. He's in Seattle." Meredith bid her lips „But that's beside the point. Can I go home now?"

„And you need a whole continent between you." Allen said „So what are you doing here? I need to know, you passed out last night and I'm your doctor."

„Waiting for the storm to calm." Meredith said and stormed past him „I have to go, looking at people like you makes me nauseous."

* * *

Everyone at Seattle Grace's surgical unit had gathered in the Auditorium to hear what Richard Webber was going to say. The rapid drop in the ratings had made most of them awry. Jackson was sitting behind Lexie and starred at Richard Webber. He didn't look good. He looked worried and like he hadn't slept in days. The audience to turned to silence when Richard raised his voice „Seattle Grace Mercy West dropped. Our standards have been comprimised by residents that are doing as they pleased without listening to their superior and by the fact that all of us got lazy. This has to change." He started „The consequences of downrating are going to be ample. The will be new teaching protocols. We need more initiative from both residents and attendings. The African project that has been organized by Dr. Karev is a good example. Use some of your time for research, publish. Dr. Avery got published in a major magical journal a few month back. More things like this needed! In addition to this we are going to create more fellowship positions on several specialties."

George and Alex were exchanging glances. The place would changed. With Kepner and Meredith gone it already had. „First, second and third year residents not allowed to specialise, interferes with full surgical training" Richard continued. Cristina and Alex looked shocked. They had already found their specialty and I'd be another three months until the start of their fourth year.

„Relations, dedications and personal preferences will no longer be a criterion of the programme. We will focus our attention on communication and behaviour with patients. For some it means an effort of humanity and compassion. For others it means not getting too emotionally involved." Lexie rolled her eyes. Even after she had left, he still had to point out that he didn't want to see her.

„Third, we are going to establish labs, class room trainings and conferences to ensure all of you receive the best medical training possible. So let's get going, there are patients to see and lives to save"

* * *

While the meeting in the auditorium was in full swing, Derek sat in the attending lounge. „I called her and a guy answered her phone and Richard is hiring people for my projects." He told someone on the phone. It had been another audacity of Richard. It was his project and his budget and he should have a say in who he was going to work with.

„Maybe she was in surgery. And a nurse answered her phone." Mark suggested. „Have you talked to him?"

„No, I …" Derek mumbled „the guy hung up…" He had been left him wondering whether Meredith was already moving on. He had spent the night looking at his sleeping son wondering whether he'd have a step dad soon. He didn't want his son to have a step dad. He had all those feelings and he still didn't knew how he felt. One minute he hated her for the mess she had created, the next he missed her like she had been taken from his life forever and the third moment he was sure he'd get over her in time – at least that was he wanted himself to want.

„Don't look for zebras here…" Mark insisted „You and Grey are going to ride into the sunset together, it's all going to work out…" Derek remained in silence. He wondered how Mark was able to remain so optimistic. „and maybe the chick Richard hired is hot, you could use…" Mark laughed.

„Mark, I'm not interested in this. I have Christopher and a wife that I alienated, a wife that ran away and whose phone has been answered by a guy." Derek said „I'm not interested in finding out how hot the fellow Richard hired for my project is" Richard had said that she was an excellent candidate and that he'd like her.

„Derek, I tried to…" Mark tried to cheer Derek up „she doesn't sleep with somebody she's working with." If she could resist him, she'd resist anybody, he thought to himself.

„Maybe she changed." Derek closed his eyes „The Meredith I fell in love with.."

„went to Vegas to run away from people treating her differently after she tried to drown herself." Mark laughed. „Have faith in her."

„You have faith in her." Derek said.

„Grey's are compassionate, they care about the people they love." Mark paused „And maybe it'll be me drinking on your porch soon. I mean I get the Impulse now." Addison had called it quits. He had moved in with Sam until he would find something else.

„I want to punch that guy."

* * *

After a quick shower at her own apartment Meredith finally went to the hospital. She had tried to call Derek, but he didn't answer. She was late for her second shift and being late during her first week really wasn't something you wanted to be. She walked to the nurse station were the daily rotation schedule was displayed. „I see you have calmed down since this morning, Dr. Burns." Allen smiled when Meredith approached the desk.

„Cut the small talk." Meredith smiled „Whose service am I on?"

Dr. Avery had told her that she'd meet one attending a day to determine whether she was up to Standard. „Let's see, Dr. Avery said that you should get to know all the departments except general, weird isn't it?" Allen smiled. Thankfully he had no clue about her history with the head of General surgery „You don't like people who flirt a little? Fine, here's your name, Dr. Vonn. Plastics, but your shift just moved to 2pm to 12pm, Dr. Burns." He could make her life a living hell and until she would agree on a date.

* * *

„Oh, is it bring-a-hot-blond-to-work-day? Nobody told me." Dr. Vonn smirked when Meredith walked into the examination room. One thing never changes, Meredith thought to herself, plastic surgeons are always very full of themselves.

„I'm your resident, Meredith Burns, pleasure to meet you." Meredith decided to ignore this Sexist remark and act professional. If it wasn't for his grey hair Dr. Vonn was looking to portray the same persona as Mark: the cocky arrogant plastic surgeon who was able to make anyone his conquest.

„Do you ever go out with coworkers?" Dr. Vonn wondered. Meredith smiled. If only she could tell him how ironic this question was.

„I make it a rule not to." Meredith smiled.

„Care to have a drink with me later?" Vonn asked. Mark had pulled the very same stunt on her when he arrived. Did they teach this during plastic fellowships?

„Have you listened to what I just told you?" Meredith wondered.

„Well, you could see it as meeting where the attending tries to get to know his resident." Vonn winked.

„No thank you. I'm … celibate and in order to stay celibate I have to stay sober, really really sober." Meredith mumbled. This was especially true after last night. She had thrown up after she had sipped her first drink and she hadn't thrown up like this since her pregnancy.

„What a pity! You look like the kind of person that'd look good in my bed. You remind me of sombody, have we met before?" he wondered. „You don't have to be embarassed."

„I don't think we have." Meredith said even though she had heard about him somewhere. „And I'm really not in the mood for this type of conversation." With things at MassGen going the way they were she wondered if it wasn't a good idea to head back to Seattle.

* * *

Derek looked around. There was one research fellow and ten med students Richard had recruited from the University of Washington. They were all waiting for him to introduce them to his trial. It was a big trial that had been started simultanously in three teaching Hospitals in the country. The objective was to research degenerative neuro diseases and develop a better understanding about the way nerve cells connected when they were built. All of them were eager to work with a surgeon with his renomee and he wondered how many would ask him to write a recommendation. Most of them only cared about the letter anyway. Richard's hire Renee Collier was Standing in the back of this flock of Young lab coated grad students. She was 30, according to her credentials she was smart, by the looks of it she was certainly attractive, but she seemed nervous. It was her first job after residency and Richard had told her she'd transition into a neuro fellow in the summer when he had hired her. Derek stood behind his desk and was shifting papers, listening to them report and introduce themselves, but he wasn't too impressed by their research. He seemed absent and wondered how Meredith would seem to one of his colleagues if they had to listen to her. While he hadn't been interested in the current project and he shuffled the papers, he looked up from his papers. Listening to them didn't distract him from the guy that had answered Meredith's phone. „I did Research on patch-clamping nerve cells." Renee said „It's been the Focus of my Research ever since graduating from med school." She said. This sounded interesting. Derek looked up. „Who are you again?" he wondered.

She smiled „Uh, that's me. Renee. I've been hired by Richard."

„How's it going?" Derek wondered.

„I'm fine. How about you?" she answered and the rest of the group started to giggle.

„I meant the research." He smiled.

„I hit a few bumps but I'm making progress" she answered, smiled and looked down.

He wanted to dislike her because Richard had hired her, but she seemed great for the Job. „Well, come to my office tomorrow, I want to find out more about what you've been doing." He had to work with her until she quit, so he might as well utilize what she had already found out. He wondered if he hadn't hired her himself, if he had interviewed her. Even though Richard had overstepped boundaries by hiring someone for his Project, she was an excellent candidate.

* * *

Meredith sat alone during lunch break. She wouldn't have expected anyone to find her. This had always been her hidout at the Hospital and hardly anybody appreciated the true historical significance of this place. Maggie said down next to her „Are you okay?

„Why are you asking?" Meredith wondered.

„You are looking at the Ether Dome. I come here every time I need to think about something important." Maggie admitted. „It's – it's were all of…"

„Do you know why it's called Ether Dome?" Meredith wondered. She had heard this story a hundred times, she knew everything about every major medical advance that had been made here during the early days of surgeries. Maggie shook her head. „I'm fine" Meredith smiled and looked down to where the operating table was „After all I'm looking at the birthplace of anesthesia. My mom told me about it. Master Blaster. In 1846, William T.G. Morton knocked out Edward Abbott with ether -in front of a LIVE studio audience- at Mass General's premier surgical amphitheater. They must have thought he's crazy. We'd probably get suspended if we pulled crap like this. It had never been done before and after knocking him out the docs removed Abbot's neck tumor while he slept. Dude didn't even flinch. And that's how anesthesia -and the name "The Ether Dome"- was born."

„Pretty badass if you ask me" Maggie nodded „Dr. Avery told me this Story once. It's not the last medical breakthrough that took place here, it's where the magic happens. Ellis Grey won her first Harper Avery while she worked here."

Meredith looked puzzled. It had been a while since anybody had talked about her mother with such an admiration „There have been quite a few in between."

„She's my role model though" Maggie smiled „I always wanted to be a doctor and she was THE female doctor when I was a teen, I always wanted to be like her."

„I never wanted to be like her, but…" Meredith was interrupted by Maggie.

„You are still following in her footsteps. Every female surgeon is. She even dedicated her first award to us." Maggie continued. If she'd known her, Meredith thought, she wouldn't talk about her like that. Meredith pulled out her protocol book „What are you doing?"

„Familiarizing myself with the protocols and I'm going to head to the city, visit the one place where I always felt home." Meredith said. Wondering whether Maggie had went to her ex fiance's condo the night before she wondered „How are you?"

„I went to the apartment and got my stuff, it was packed up in boxes and I just had to pick them up. It was way too easy. It felt like a ripped off band-aid. It hurt for a short while and now everything is fine." She said. „Shouldn't it feel like a ripped off heart, not like a ripped off band-aid?"

„It does, if he's the one." Meredith said and quickly got up. She was overwhelmed with nausea every time she thought about Derek.

* * *

When Arizona walked into the apartment she heard Sofia's scream. Callie wasn't sitting on the couch and something felt wrong. She ran across the living room to get into their baby's room as fast as possible and found both of them there „Calliope? Callie? Where?" she asked. Callie was lying on the ground and Sofia was in her bed. Judging from the redness in her face she must have been crying for a significant amount of time. She took care of Sofia and calmed her down, changed her diaper and fed her. Afterwards she put her back into her bed and sat down on the ground next to Callie. „I told you you can't Keep staring at the brick wall."

„I'm starring at the ceiling now" Callie corrected her.

„Callie, I know this isn't easy." She had no Imagination of how hard it was, but she knew it wasn't easy. „I know you have things to work through, but tomorrow will be better. Just cocus on all the good in our life. Sofia is here with us and you are and we'll get married. You will become an amazing orthopedic surgeon and we are going to be fine."

* * *

 _Always remember you can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself, no storm lasts forever. When the earth moves underneath your feet, pray that it won't drag you down with it._

* * *

Nausea, it had been the lunch break when it hit her. She was late. Not in the sense of late for an appointment or late for work. She was late. She had driven to a pharmacy a few blocks away and bought a pregnancy test. The apartment was empty and she looked around her. There was the nausea again. It was just as bad as it used to be with Christopher. She was ten days late, but she had been so preoccupied with everything going on in her life that she hadn't noticed the symptoms until the nausea had started. She was alone in a city where nobody knew her, away from her son and away from the man she had loved, whom she still loved. Peeing on a stick had never been more fun. While she prayed for the stick to stay White, she knew it'd be blue in another three minutes. She was just like her mother and she wondered what she was going to do.


	32. Chapter 32

_Thank you for your reviews! Drama at work hasn't calmed down yet, so sorry for taking so long, but I was exhausted and really didn't feel like getting up to write the last bits until now._

 _Clarice: Thank you for taking your time and writing those beautiful reviews! Hope you are enjoying this chapter too!_

 _Dora: This was originally meant to be in chapter 31 too, but as I didn't get around to write all of it last week (and it made sense to split the chapter there) I decided to post the first half early. So I hope you enjoy getting off the cliff._

 _Darlene: Meredith will tell someone without really telling soon. It's not Derek's mom. She's still in an emotional dilemma. Hope you enjoy where this chapter is taking you._

 _Rita: Thanks for the review!_

 _Kiley: Thanks! Hope you enjoy this chapter too._

 _Charlotte: Mark is going to Show up in Seattle again, but not just yet. Meredith will find somebody else from her past to confide in._

 _Shelley: Meredith and Derek both need a wake up call and it's coming soon._

 _Susan: Thanks for the Review! Derek's mother has a feeling Meredith is pregnant, but Meredith won't find out about that until her next visit in Seattle._

 _Greysfann: Hope you enjoy this chapter too!_

 _Melanie: Thank you for taking your time to review! I liked that parallel too when I wrote the chapter. At this point both of them are trying to figure out how to live their lives where they are now. ;)_

 _Patsy: Meredith needs to learn how to deal with her problems in an adult matter. Everything that happens in Boston is going to help her realize what she really wants._

* * *

Chapter 32

* * *

 _Everybody says that love hurts, but that's not true. Loneliness hurts, rejection hurts, losing someone hurts. Everyone confuses these things with love, but in reality love is the only thing in the world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again. It's hard to let go and move on. It's harder to love again._

* * *

Meredith sat in Dr. Avery's Office again. It had been a week since she had started working here, two weeks since she had arrived in Boston – a lifetime since she had left Seattle and five days since she had found out she was pregnant. She wasn't sure whether she should call Derek and tell him, she wasn't even sure whether she could not tell him, Keep from him what Ellis had kept from Richard. She still got a warm mushy Feeling whenever she thought of Derek and Christopher, about the life she had had with them, but she was here now and a pregnancy didn't change that. It wouldn't bring Zola back. Sometimes when she saw an african american Baby in the nursery she wondered what Zola was doing at the Minute, whether she was alright and whether she'd see her again. She sat in Dr. Avery's Office and waited for him.

„Dr. Grey, how was your week? The feedback I received from your attendings has been rather positive." He smiled when he came in. He sat down at his desk and Meredith looked at him and smiled.

„Everything was fine." She smiled. The procedures she had scrubbed in on and the patients she had taken care of, the medicine and Dr. Margrete Pierce: Those had been the Things that had been great about the past week. Maggie had paged her whenever she got to do a solo surgery. She was a few weeks away from her boards and every surgery she was performing on her own, every Outcome was important.

„So you are here to stay?" Jackson's grandfather wondered. „I was afraid you'd feel homesick."

It was true, she had been thinking about Seattle a lot, more than she wanted. But she knew that she was in Boston and they were in Seattle. „If you let me." Meredith giggled.

„Ellis Grey has been a remarkable surgeon, if you are half as good as she was, you are worth keeping around. I'll tell Allen Sawyer to assign you to me" he said and got up.

„To you?" Meredith wondered.

„My grandson didn't want to be mentored, so I guess giving Ellis' daughter a second chance isn't… Dr. Grey, I'm not doing a lot of surgeries these days, but I can get you onto any surgery you like."

„That wouldn't be fair." Meredith said. „You shouldn't let me scrub in unless I earned it."

„It wasn't fair that Dr. Webber fired you. You took the fall for my grandson – and for everyone else. You were willing to take the responsibility for this – I think that's a good quality." He took down a photograph and handed it to Meredith. Meredith remembered where it had been taken. She had pushed Jackson down a slide that day. „Do you want to come over for dinner on Saturday? Jackson's mom invited me and a few people from the Harper Avery committee."

„That's a fantastic offer, but I guess I hate to decline. The separation from Christopher and Derek got to my stomach." Meredith declined. She knew how she would react to any Kind of Food. She couldn't risk anybody finding out about her condition. She still wasn't sure if she wanted to find out anything about the child she was carrying. Derek was gone and this child would remind her of him forever.

„Maybe another time, Now get back to Dr. Vonn, I'll see you when I page you."

* * *

Arizona walked into the operating room with a side braid that was barely hidden underneath her scrub cap. Alex who had prepped the patient looked at her. She looked at him and he knew that he wasn't supposed to talk. He waited until the anastesia had started to knock the Patient out and began to make the incision and insert the tube that were required for a laparoscopic appendectomy.

„She bought all those magazines and she met with a planner." Arizona told him when he handed over everything to her.

„What are you talking about?" he looked at her in confusion. He knew that she was going to get married and he was surprised that Arizona was freaking out when Callie was planning a wedding.

„Ever since I brought her home she's obsessed with wedding colours and dress shapes, designers, flowers, favours and I don't know what else." Arizona said in desparation. Ever since she had found Callie on the floor she was planning a wedding Arizona knew she didn't want.

„You proposed…" Alex tried to calm the woman down that was make precise incisions inside a child's Abdomen.

„I did, but it just seems like Callie doesn't try to get over it and she doesn't try to bond with Sofia" Arizona sighed and forced herself to look at the Screen again.

„"Torres has only been home for a week. Maybe she needs time…" Alex tried to reason.

„…well she has time to plan a 50,000 $USD wedding extravaganza… I…" Arizona snapped. Arizona was quite sure Callie wouldn't have wanted a big wedding and that she was trying to make up for the fact that her Family had told her that they weren't going to be there.

„You should calm down and let her do whatever she's doing." Alex insisted „Sometimes it takes time. Maybe tomorrow will be different."

Arizona looked at him and paused the surgical procedure for a second „What if it isn't?" Callie had hired someone to make an ice sculpture for them and a 7tier wedding cake. She was out of control.

* * *

Meredith followed Dr. Vonn into a room. Plastic surgery had never been something she had felt particularly passionate about, but at least Dr. Vonn was a surgeon with a brilliant Reputation. His cases were spectacular. Most of the time it wasn't about bigger boobs or slimmer hips, it was about creating a new person. He was changing lives. „Good morning, Donna. How's the trip? He asked when he walked into a room in the private wing.

„Smooth, perfect." The man answered. He was here for surgery.

„She's still having some penis issues." The woman next to her explained.

„Don't we all, Dr. Burns?" Dr. Vonn looked at Meredith and she rolled with her eyes. If only he knew how many penis issues she had at the Minute. He looked at her „What do you know about a vaginoplasty?"

It wasn't the first time Meredith was working with a surgeon on this procedure. Mark had performed a few while she had been on Plastics. „Risks are low, but there can be complications such as bleeding, infection, poor healing of scarring and the need for a second surgery. After surgery there may be some pain, soreness and swelling for a few days. We will prescribe pain medication and antibiotics. Most patients walk within 2 to 5 days and full healing is achieved within six weeks."

„Have you ever scrubbed in on one?" Dr. Vonn wondered.

„When the plastic surgeon tried to woe me into …" Meredith bid her lips and stopped to ramble „yes I did."

„It's great to start fresh, isn't it Donna? After that we'll give you a new nose, new boobs." He said.

„New self." Meredith mumbled.

„Dr. Burns, do you…" he looked at her sternly and guided her out the door.

„No, don't look at me like said" she insisted „I know what we are doing, people don't come to you to fix their outside, they come to you to fix what's on the inside – and if that means giving someone a straighter nose, or bigger breasts, or…a vagina."

„That's what I tell all my residents and fellows… but you haven't gotten that speech." He said surprised „Why do you know this speech?

„Mark Sloan." Meredith said. It's what he had told her after she had complained about being on Plastics too much.

„He's been one of my star pupils." Dr. Vonn said with a hint of pride. „How is he doing?"

„I wouldn't know. I haven't talked to him in a while." Meredith said and thought about every Thing Mark and she had experienced together. Her son has his first name as middle name, he was her husband's best friend.

„We always did have the same taste in women. He was a lot more popular among the nurses though." Dr. Vonn chuckled.

„I beg your pardon." Meredith mumbled.

„Dr. Sloan has a reputation – as you probably know." Dr. Vonn suggested.

Meredith corrected his statement „Dr. Sloan was a manwhore. – like you. But no, I didn't sleep with him. So shut up and teach." She wasn't here to talk about Mark Sloan or the live she had left behind. Mark had changed. After Maria was born he had turned into a loving and caring person who sacrificed everything for the People he loved.

„Oh, the last time a female surgeon talked to me like this, it was Ellis Grey. You are fierce." Dr. Vonn said. „Are you sure you haven't been sleeping with Mark because you are the type of girl he'd fall for. Young, a Little insecure, bossy and bubbly."

„And you are a pig! But that doesn't change the fact that you are about to change that men's women's life." Meredith reminded him that they had a patient to look at.

„Well, I am and you are on post op Dr. Burns for the next 24 hours." He said and handed over about twenty charts to Meredith.

„I'm not on call" Meredith said. She was tired all the time and she knew she shouldn't be working for so many hours. While she was unsure what she was going to do with this child, she didn't want to risk his or her health and well-being. She wanted it to be alright.

„Well, you are now!" Dr. Vonn said „Prove to me you are worthy of being trusted with patients and I'll let you scrub in on an interesting case." Meredith nodded. She was here to learn and being a resident wasn't easy.

* * *

When Arizona walked into her living room Callie sat on the couch and sampled wedding cake. There were about 20 different cartons with different pieces of wedding cake. Callie must have been to every bakery in the city. Arizona looked shocked. The sheer amount of wedding cake overwhelmed her. Callie was planning a wedding she wouldn't have ever wanted. Something in Callie had changed. When Callie told her to sit down to join in on the sampling, Arizona snapped. „ Callie, this isn't normal. All those boxes. Why are you so obsessed with our wedding?"

„I want it to be perfect." Callie told her „You asked me if I want to marry you, I do and I'm planning… I'm focusing on the good"

„I thought you … I thought you were dying and…" Arizona mumbled. She wanted to be with Callie, but she never pictured herself getting married in a big church and she had never worried about the perfect cake. „I just pictured our wedding to be… different."

„I'm not, sorry to tell you, but I survived… sorry I survived…" Callie shouted.

„I wasn't going to tell you that I'm sorry you are alive" Arizona said „But Callie, you aren't in any constitution to celebrate the happiest day of your life and this isn't normal."

„I just want to find the perfect cake." Callie said „I want every single detail of this day to be perfect."

„Why?" Arizona said.

„Because my life is anything but" Callie said. „Just look at me" To Arizona Callie looked like the most beautiful creature on the planet. Despite the fact that she wasn't really looking after herself at the minute, Callie was beautiful.

„If we get married, I want you to be happy." Arizona said „I want you to be able to appreciate the day and the whole beauty of it the way I do, but I also want you to be happy every other day, that's just one day, Callie. You get that, right?"

„I need this Arizona, please." Callie begged and Arizona took a fork and started eating. She knew Callie wasn't well and that Callie was the only person who was able to make her change her mind about the way she felt about herself.

* * *

 _Derek? Derek, where are you? I can't find him. Alex, have you seen Derek?_

 _Meredith, what are you talking about? Derek died 10 years ago._

 _No, I talked to him, talked to him last niht. He wasn't dead. He…_

 _Mer, look at me. Derek died, he's been in an accident and he died of a brain bleed. He's dead. I'm sorry._

 _I#ve Alzheimer, don't I?_

 _I'm sorry._

 _How did it happen?_

 _What? You getting Alzheimer?_

 _No, Derek dying. Were we happy? I can't remember… the last thing I remember was being on a plane to Boston… and you look like this isn't the first time I asked you about it._

 _You were. It was sickening and this isn't the first time. I thought about lying before, but it just wouldn't be fair._

 _So why are you lying? He left me, didn't he? He isn't coming back. I need him, I need him…_

 _I know… I know… but I'm not lying. I wish I was… because if I was, I could kick his ass and knock some sense into him. He's dead, very dead._

 _Izzie died, she's dead. She had a brain tumour. Derek couldn't save her. How are you coping?_

 _Meredith, Izzie died 15 years ago._

 _15 years? Where's Lexie?_

 _Lexie died in a plane crash._

 _Everyone is leaving and everyone is dying. What happened to Derek? I need you to tell me what happened to Derek._

 _Meredith, we don't have to do this, I don't need to tell you ever detail about every tragedy that happened to you._

 _Alex, tell me what happened to Derek!_

 _He was hit by a semi and has been brought to Dillard Medical Center. He had a flail chest, but they missed the head lack and he ended up brain dead._

 _I want to see him, Maybe Amelia if he's PVS, he might…_

 _Meredith, you pulled the plug. You were with him and there wasn't anything you could have done._

 _No, no, I can't remember. He's alive, just tell him that I love him and that I'm very sorry. I didn't mean for Zola to get taken away and I only went to Boston._

* * *

The room was dark. „… wow… I hate dreams…" Meredith mumbled while she turned around in her on call room bed. I remember everything, why can't I forget my nightmares, she wondered.

„Oh, I like interpreting dreams, tell me about your dream." She heard a voice from the top bunk. It was Allen again.

„Other people's dreams are boring, like the canteen menu." Meredith shrugged.

„You should stop talking to yourself about your dreams in that case." Allen suggested. It was just the two of them in the room and she began to wonder whether this was a coincidence.

„And you should stop talking to me." She rolled her eyes.

He got down from the top bunk and sat down on the bed next to hers „I won't until you agree to go out on a date with me."

„We went out for a drink the day I started to work here, remember?" She asked and remembered how this had played out. Dr. Burns wasn't supposed to befriend other residents here. If she had needed proof of this, that night had been the perfect proof.

„That's not a date." Allen smiled. Looking at him she wondered how somebody who seemed so confident in the OR could be such an arrogant unbearable Person outside of it.

„Well that's all you will get – ever. I'm not interested and you are a narcistic asshole."

„Wow, you are direct." Allen admitted „Nobody here is ever like this – they'd just talk behind your back."

„Well, I like to tell people how I feel about them – at least I'm trying to." Meredith said. „Honesty works best. Had to learn that lesson the hard way."

„Okay, let's try it. I saw you in the OR yesterday and I .." Allen smiled and paused.

„What?" Meredith asked. She had no clue what he was trying to tell her.

„You were good. Before I thought you had slept with somebody or your mommy or daddy knows somebody to get a mid semester transfer from a mediocre hospital on the other side of the country to MassGen, but you were good, so I figured it might have been your skill level that has gotten you the job." He said. Meredith looked at him in disbelief. This had been the single most nicest Thing she had heard from anybody this week, but this Impression soon ceased as he tried to find out what she had been dreaming about „SO what have you been dreaming about?Was it me and the fact that we haven't been out on a date yet?"

„If I wanted to hear an opinion, I'd call my friends." Meredith said and got up. She needed to talk to somebody she trusted.

* * *

After finding a quiet corner in the hallway Meredith dialed a number. She needed to talk to a friend. She needed to talk to someone who wouldn't give her crap about leaving and she hoped that Alex would be that person.

„Do you have any clue how late it is here?" was the first Thing he asked when he picked up his phone.

„No, but I dreamt of you- of us." She said. „I'm really worried. You told me Derek died and I think I had Alzheimer because I didn't remember he was dead. What's that supposed to mean?"

„It means that your dreams are even more messed up than your life." Alex said straight out. „What's the matter, Mer?"

„Alex, I'm serious." Meredith insisted „What does this mean?"

Alex wasn't too much into interpreting dreams „Meredith, call him, he'll be pissed because it's like 3am in Seattle, but he'll answer the phone."

„Is Lexie with you? Can you hand over the phone to her?" Meredith asked. She had no Ambition to call Derek and tell him that she had dreamt that he was dead. Not after he had called her and Allen had answered her phone. Alex handed over the phone to Lexie who had casually joined him for some midnight sex to calm down after work.

„I dreamt that Derek was dead. Well, the dream was like 14 years into the future, but he was dead and you were dead" Meredith rambled without breathing„and Cristina had left and everything just fell apart. Do you think any part of this was real?"

Lexie's eyes widened. How was she supposed to know if this was real? She hoped she wasn't going to be dead in 14 years. She wanted to have a life and to build a family. „I don't hope so, I mean I was dead. I don't want to be dead. So how was your first week?

„Good, I kicked cardio's ass and I feel free. For the first time in weeks I feel like I can breathe, like I can feel the OR and I start to discover this whole other side of me." Meredith smiled hoping all her bullshit would convince Lexie that everything was fine.

„Meredith, you don't have to pretend, I'm your sister." Lexie looked right through the bullshit she had just thrown at her. „I know something is up. So just tell me!"

„I'm not pretending. I'm fine. I'm on a surgical rush." Meredith insisted.

„You dreamed that everyone close to you was dead in 15 years." Lexie reminded her.

„Alex was alive, and like you said, it's been a dream." Meredith said.

„What if it wasn't just a dream, what if it means that you'll be alone in 15 years because you ran away now is going to alienate everyone around you." Lexie asked „Just for the sake of Interpretation."

„It was a dream Lexie, just a dream. Because if it wasn't, I dreamed that I had Alzheimer, I might actually… the early onset one it's genetic…" Meredith stammered. Tears built up in her eyes. Shitty Hormones, she hated those pregnancy Hormones that started to make her feel too emotional.

„You, you could get tested." Lexie reminded her.

„I did. I got tested before I started med school" Meredith admitted „I never opened the letter and now I don't need to because I'm happy."

„You are happy." Lexie repeated and tried to mirror her tone.

„I'm happy, I'm doing amazing surgeries at an amazing hospital. I'm happy. I never thought I'd be, but I am." Meredith insisted. „Bye Lex"

* * *

Derek had given her orders which were way too detailed and now Lexie spend hours every day prepping his OR. There were hundreds off little things he wanted to be taken care of. The lights had the be positioned exactly the way he wanted them to be, if it was off by an angle of 5 degrees he'd get mad. When George came into the room Lexie looked up from her cheat sheet where she had written down everything. While she had a photographic memory, Derek's last breakout had made her want to double check everything. He had been acting like an ass in the OR and no no resident had been able to satisfy his needs. Every single resident in the 2nd and 3rd year had walked away. Only Lexie had stuck around. Owen had told him that he had to admit that he needs Meredith and the whole situation wasn't completely her fault which had made him kick Owen out off his own OR and another trauma surgeon had taken over.

„How's Meredith?" George wondered. Lexie smiled. He had always had a radar and somehow it felt like they were going back to being friends.

„She's happy. She dreamt that Derek was dead, but she's happy." Lexie smiled. Meredith wasn't fine.

„She's happy? A guy answered her phone and she's saying that she's happy?" George wondered.

„That's what she said." Lexie smiled.

„What did she say?" Derek wondered. He was standing at the door with his ferryboat scrub cap.

„Oh, Derek." Lexie looked at him. She didn't tell, but he kept starring at her and George „That you are dead and she's happy. And I was dead too. Well, she probably didn't say it like this. You being dead in her dream wasn't causal for her being happy. She dreamed about you." George told him.

„Dreamed that he was dead." Lexie corrected him „In 15 years, not right now. It was a future dream – and I was dead too, so there's nothing to be worried about."

„Or we should both be worried. See you in 35 minutes, Dr. Grey." Derek told her „and don't mess up the preparations this time."

When the surgery began Derek didn't say anything. No ‚It's a beautiful day to save lives', no instructions on which Instruments he needed (Lexie knew anyway). „Are you okay? You are awfully quiet today." Lexie wondered.

„I'm pretending to be dead." Derek mumbled.

„Meredith had a nightmare. She doesn't wish you were dead, she misses you. It's her subconsious telling her that she's missing you. She made a bad call and she's suffering the consequences." Lexie said. She had been dead too.

„I'm sure she's … She never did in her life." Derek told her. After that the OR turned into complete silence. What Derek couldn't comprehend was how Meredith was even able to think about a live spent without him.

* * *

After having spend the night with Dr. Vonn's postop patients, Meredith finally got out of the Hospital at 2.00 pm the next day. Meredith walked two miles to the Mary Baker Eddy Library. It had been one of her favorite places and she had went there after School a lot. It felt like traveling back in time to 1935 if she stepped into the giant stained glass globe - the Christian Science Mapparium -. It was a 30ft diameter sphere painted with a world map from pre-WWII. Meredith had spent more time here than any other kid at the time. It's where she had read her first surgery book while skipping freshman biology. This was the place where she had always been able to breathe. The whole world seemed to disappear inside the globe. She thought that she'd come up with an answer. ‚What am I going to do with you?' she wondered looking at her stomach. She knew that she needed an appointment with an OB/Gyn soon. She looked at Belgian Congo on the glass globe above her head. The giant stained glass globe had always fascinated her, but thinking about this child made her sad. Was she selfish when considered the possibility of not raising her child? How would Derek react if she left that child in a basket in front of the door of the house they used to live in? Or would the child be better off if she gave it up for Adoption?

Meredith's stream of thoughts was interrupted when a Young woman approached her from behind „What are you doing here?" Maggie wondered. This had been the second time Meredith Burns had turned up at one of their favorite places. It was like she had finally found the one Person who enjoyed the mysteries and the history of Boston.

„Thinking" Meredith sighed „Why do you keep showing up at my favorite places?"

„Your favourite places? Those are my favorite places. I always felt close to I don't know, I just felt like I was home." Maggie said. „I went here every day after they told me I was adopted. I went here and sat here for hours."

„My favourite places." Meredith insisted. „I used to come here every day during the summer holidays. My mom was always working and I just took the bus and drove here. I read my first medical book in here. I was in 4th grade and while everyone else read books with enlarged letters, I went ‚introduction to anatomy'. When I was in here, time lost any meaning. I almost forgot how happy I was when I went here."

„I never saw you." Maggie said.

„You are a lot younger than me and we moved away when I was 15. So you must have been… how old were you in 1992?"

„9, I turned nine." Maggie said.

„You were born in 1983?" Meredith wondered and looked at Maggie.

„Yeah, pretty young, I know, I get those looks all the time. Everyone looks at you and thinks that you are something special, but they don't get that you are"

„just a human being." Meredith nodded „I have a sister your age, two actually. Lexie studied at Havard. She was going to work at MassGen, but then her mom died and she had to take care of our dad which… nevermind, she's pretty good. She's still working at the hospital where I used to work."

„Have fun, Dr. Burns." Maggie smiled „You can have this place for yourself today"

„You can call me Meredith." Meredith smiled.

* * *

„You never called me." Cristina said after Meredith had picked up her phone „I thought I was your person."

„I'm busy." Meredith was sitting in the green line and was on her way back to the hospital.

„In the OR?" Cristina wondered. That would have been an excuse to her. She was almost jealous, MassGen's cardio unit was state of art.

„No, I went to the library and walked into a coworker." Meredith smiled. „and I needed time to think."

„You met a coworker at a library. Is the coworker good looking?" Cristina tried to get an answer out of her.

„SHE is nice and friendly and easy to talk to" Meredith answered with emphasis on the gender „a little bit perky, but she can't help that." Maggie seemed like the only resident that wasn't completely full of herself.

„How are you?" Cristina wondered. They hadn't talked since Meredith had called her after the interviews.

„I'm happy." Meredith repeated the line she tried to convince herself.

„That's bullshit" Cristina laughed „You've never been happy. You are dark and twisty."

„No, it isn't. I get used to living on my own." Meredith said and looked down on her belly. She was glad that Cristina wasn't able to see her „I can get over him, Mom got over Webber. She left Seattle,"

But before she could finish, Cristina interrupted her „had a child, put it up for adoption"

„Cristina, she forgot that Richard and Thatcher even existed and she was happy maybe I can leave my past behind." Meredith hoped. All she had to do was survive the next year and everything would get easier after that point.

„What about your son?" Cristina wondered.

„He's with Derek, I miss him, but he's well, I know Derek is great with him, I'll see him. They are better off without me anyway." Meredith said.

„that's not you , Mer, not anymore; you made a mistake stop kidding yourself, you can't live without them." Cristina said. „If you don't fight for christopher now, you'll regret it, come back home and fight for him"

„Seattle is not my home, mom ran away, she forgot about Richard, I think I deserve a chance to get over Derek" Meredith said even though she knew that there was no way in ever getting over him now.

„Mer, I don't want kids, but I'm not you… you love him and…" Cristina said.

„What do you want me to say, Cristina? That I can't wait until I can roll over at 2am and find him instead of a text or no text?" Meredith asked and tears ran down her cheeks. The woman on the seat opposite of hers looked at her „That I want to kiss him. That I fall asleep crying because Chris isn't here."

„That would be honest, but you are strong Meredith. You were strong enough to leave Christopher behind." Cristina said.

By the time Cristina had mentioned Christopher's Name, Meredith was in tears „I have to get back to work" Meredith mumbled and hung up.

* * *

„She gave up Christopher" Cristina walked up to Lexie and sat down next to her when she noticed that Lexie was trying to talk to her. „Something is up, I don't know what it is, but something is wrong with her." Lexie told her.

„She didn't and she didn't give up anything." Cristina said „She's in Boston because she has to be there, but she loves McDreamy and you know them… there will … there's got to be…" She had to come back.

„When did Cristina Yang become so optimistic?" Lexie laughed while putting another Piece of banana into her mouth.

„When did little Grey become dark and twisty?" Cristina smiled.

„I'm alone, I get the impulse, if anyone offered me a position at . again, I'd take it." Lexie said „All that keeps me here is sex."

„Why?" Cristina wondered.

„Because Boston is a beautiful city if you are running from Thatcher Grey." Lexie laughed.

„What happened to your dad? Is he drinking again?" Cristina wondered.

„No, his girlfriend is making sure of it." Lexie looked down.

„And his girlfriend is the problem." Cristina concluded.

„Precisely, they redecorated the house, erased every single evidence my mom ever lived there, it's just like he allowed her to do it – everything I have here is my job -and my nephew."

„What if she gets back with McDreamy and they both move to Boston. I don't think they'd take both of us"

* * *

Arizona and Owen were in surgery together. It had been four hours of hard work, but now the kid was relatively stable. „Callie is planning a wedding. I don't know who's because I never dreamt about white doves or a horse carriage or a sea of white roses." Arizona said with her hands stuck inside the patient.

„Arizona, she suffered… she…" Owen tried to calm her down.

„I know Owen and I thought I was losing what I thought I had lost forever, but she isn't fine, she shouldn't be planning." Arizona insisted „She has to be Callie again and I want to help her, but she won't let me."

„If planning makes her happy and takes her mind off what happened, it's what she should do. Let her heal on her own."

* * *

„What have you done?" Meredith yelled when she came running into the room „You don't page me 5 minutes later, you page me asap. If this patient is dying, that's on me."

The intern looked at her insecurely. „He went into cardiac arrest." He mumbled.

„Didn't I tell you to monitor him?" Meredith yelled.

„He was fine when I check on him…" he said when she shoved him away and took the paddles.

„Step away" she yelled. When she heard a sinus rhythm after the first attempt she breathed out in relief „He's okay. I got him back"

The intern looked relieved. „We got him back Are you okay Ms. Campbell?" he asked.

„Where's Rupert? Can you get Rupert for me?" she woman asked.

„Who is Rupert?" he looked at Meredith.

„The husband, he died 7 years ago… he's the person she always asks for according to the hospital, do you ever look at the charts?" Meredith answered after looking at the chart. The woman had been brought in from a close by nursing home.

„Rupert… Rupert…. Where's my Rupert." She wondered and the intern froze until he blured out „Ms. Campbell, Rupert died, he died 7 years ago…"

„Don't tell me I'm alone in this world, honey, don't tell me I'm alone. I'm miserable alone and I can't go on with him." The old lady cried and Meredith looked at her. Would this be her? She ran out of the room when a feeling of nausea overwhelmed her. There was no time to reach closest toilet so a litter box at the nurses station had to suffice, but the hormones made her emotional.

* * *

„Are you okay Meredith?" Maggie wondered after Meredith's had emptied the insides of her stomach into the litterbox.

Meredith was crying „She never got over him, she never fought for him. She kept asking for him." She mumbled through the tears. Her mom had never fought for Richard. She had reached the point where it had been too late to fight for him. „Be extraordinary, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra, she told me to be extraordinary and she wasn't talking about surgery. She told me to…"

„Are you fine? Are you okay?" Maggie blared out. Nothing Meredith told her made any sense to her „I don't know you well and you are scaring me…"

„No, I just can't breathe, I need to breathe and I can't. And you probably thing I'm the most screwed up resident you ever met." Meredith looked up from her hands.

„Oh, you are fine. Take this and breathe. Everything is going to be fine." Maggie told her and handed over a brown paper bag to her. She smiled and tried to calm Meredith down „I can't bond and I don't know why because my parents are like the most loving and caring people ever. They never made me feel like I wasn't loved or anything, but when it comes to strangers I just can't bond. It makes you wonder if it's because your biological parents were some sort of social screw ups."

„What happened to your biological parents?" Meredith wondered.

„I was adopted, and my dad's name wasn't on the birth certificate." Maggie said. „and my mom, she's like this huge superstar."

„Sometimes it's the right thing to give your child up for adoption" Meredith said and for a second she had a moment of clarity „Wait, how old are again?"

„Twenty something…I told you" Maggie said. That was right, she had told her the day before. „I'm old enough to be here. Why are you asking?"

„Oh, I just … forgot." Meredith said „I can't bond either, but that's probably due to severe abandonment issues. My mom dragged me across the country and I never saw my dad again until my intern year. She was raising me on her own, so naturally I didn't spend a lot of time with anybody. I had no friends because usually parents don't feel too excited if you dissect their kids' hamster." Meredith laughed at the thought of Ms. Gingham throwing her out and telling her to never bother Marie again.

„You dissected a hamster?" Maggie laughed.

„I thought it was normal. I went to the hospital after school and did my homework in an OR gallery. I had my thanksgiving dinner at the nurses station and at Christmas I got sewing kits. And I was alone, I was good at being alone, I was so good at it I never considered the possibility that it would change." Meredith explained.

„It did?" Maggie wondered.

It did. At least it had until she had moved to Boston. „Yeah, I met a guy and I met a sister I never thought I had, I learned to have people in my life and I loved my life. I was happy, truly happy." Meredith smiled. It was the life she had never envisioned to have.

„What happened?" Maggie wondered.

„Disaster struck and all of this went away." Meredith said without really opening up.

„It must be horrible to suffer such a loss." Maggie nodded. „Is this the reason you went to Boston? I mean to forget about everything and to move on."

„Yeah, to move on." Meredith nodded. Maggie had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but Meredith had no ambition to ever reveal the truth. She had to move on and she had to figure out how to.

* * *

 _Life teaches you the art of letting go in every event, in every minute. When you have learnt to let go, you will be joyful and as you start being joyful, more will be given to you. But how do you know how long it's going to take?_

* * *

Derek sat at the bar. Christopher was with Lexie and he was on call and wanted to do a bit of research. The drink in front of him was a Club Soda, but he needed to be around people. He was alone at the bar. He felt an impulse to drink Scotch, but being on call alcohol was off limits. When Richard sat down next to him he smiled and ordered a Club Soda too, Derek got up and went back to the hospital. He missed her. He was still smelling lavender around every corner. He was mad at her for not telling her where she was. He was mad at her for not talking to him about the suspension. He loved her, even when he hated her. She had dreamt that he was dead, he felt dead without her.


	33. Chapter 33

I hope there are no major typos in this, have been working way too much this week and put all of this together in about five hours today and yesterday. Thanks for all your reviews! I can assure you that Meredith will reflect on Ellis' choices soon. This chapter is going to reveal some secrets that are crucial to both Meredith and Derek. The darkest hour is just before dawn!

Lynette: I'm glad you liked the last chapter and can't wait for the next one.  
Susan: Good instincts! Thanks for the review!  
Shelley: Just wait for it to pass and keep reading! The bomb will go off soon ;)  
Dora: Nothing can destroy their love for each other. It's infinite and there will be people in the story that remind them of how much they love each other.  
CiaraM: More MerDer coming soon, he's still in Seattle in this chapter though.  
Kiley: Derek is coming to his senses, so there'll be some progression soon.  
ForeverMerDer: They'll realize how much they feel for each other and their family soon.  
Darlene: Things that are bound to happen, will happen. Chapter 34 will pick up immediately after the end of this one and is going to focus on research.  
Melanie: You might not like the kind of wake up call Meredith is getting, but she'll find out what we already know very very soon.  
Patsy: The dream was just that.  
roganjalex: Thanks! Hope you enjoy this chapter too.  
greysfann: They'll find their way back too each other, just hang on! 

* * *

**Chapter 33**

 _Secrets can't hide in science._ _Medicine has a way of exposing lies. Within the walls of the hospital, the truth is stripped bare. How we keep our secrets outside the hospital - well, that's a little different. One thing is certain, whatever it is we're trying to hide; we're never ready for that moment when the truth gets naked. That's the problem with secrets - like misery, they love company. They pile up and up until they take over everything, until you don't have room for anything else, until you're so full of secrets you feel like you're going to burst._

* * *

It was a friday afternoon on the surgical ward which usually meant that most attendings rounded on their patients and got as many of them discharged as possible. They went from room to room with a bunch of residents following them and interns presenting the cases. Maggie and Meredith were Standing in the back when an intern presented the case of a 35 year old woman who had came in with arhythmic heartsound. Meredith had done the ultrasound when she had been admitted and the inflammed heart muscle couldn't have been healed. At Seattle Grace the Patient would have stayed for the Weekend. She was the mother of three and despite being told to rest she wouldn't be able to do so. „She's hiding her pain" Meredith mumbled. „She's not ready to be discharged."

„You might not believe it, but I'm a lot better with my children and my husband around." The woman explained.

„She's only a resident. You should be fine." The attending said and signed the discharge papers. But something felt off.

The next Patient was a patient Maggie had operated on. She was a sweet 70 year old woman who had needed a Pacemaker. „We'll see you in 6 weeks for a follow up, but remember, only light activities, no sex." Maggie said and blused a little bit.

The woman loved „I haven't had sex in 45 years, darling." The Group of residents looked at her.

„In 45 years?" Maggie mumbled.

„That's when my husband died, I never felt the need to…" the Patient started to explain, but Maggie interrupted her „But that's an incredible long amount of time."

Meredith took her arm, dragged Maggie away and apologized to the patient. „Dr. Pierce. It's okay, mam. We'll see you for your follow up."

* * *

„What was that about?" Meredith wondered. „You can't talk to a patient like that and you know that!"

„45 years…They always expect you to move on." Maggie mumbled. „Don't you want to move on? You shot down Vonn and Sanders and you are just – you don't seem to be interested. You're at the hospital more than I am."

Maggie was right, she had spent an awful lot of time at the hospital. She had taken on extra shifts in the ER and there had been days where she hadn't been outside. She had been a surgeon and she had been good at it. Attendings liked her and Maggie picked her to assist for her solo surgeries. One night she had performed an emergency craniotomy because the on call neuro surgeon was in surgery and she was on her own. There had been five surgeries Jackson's grandpa had performed with her on the other side of the table. „It just... I'm just not wondering what's out there. Not feeling like I'm missing anything. I've had that great, amazing love. And that part's behind me now, and I have surgery, and... I'm happy. And I never thought I would be again and I am. And that's all I need." At least that's how she felt inside the hospital. That was the reason she never wanted to leave it. Every time she entered her condo she was reminded of what she had left behind.

„What about your friends?" Maggie wondered.

„They are in Washington." Meredith smiled. She had to make it in Boston, there was no part of her that could fall apart, but she missed all of them Working at MassGen was different than working at Seattle Grace. The only activity residents ever did together was going out to the bar, they were more competitive and more focused on keeping competitors at arm's length. Most of them seemed indifferent towards the other residents on a personal level. „What about Dean?" Meredith wondered.

„He liked to spoon and I just didn't. He has to find someone who likes to spoon and I have to find someone I can fall asleep next to. Do you think you'll ever be able to move on?" Maggie sat next to her.

„No, all I keep thinking about how badly I want to hear his voice again, I keep calling my mail box and listen to his last voicemail." Meredith admitted. „I just hope it'll pass, that some day in the near future I'll wake up and don't miss him." The desire to go back – it was what had kept her mother in the halls of whichever hospital she was working at.

* * *

Days went by and Meredith started to leave the hospital, she went back to the old house, the park where she used to play with the nanny, her old school and she remembered the many nights she had heared her mother's sobs in the tiny apartment on the other side of town and she knew that in order to forget about her past she had to forget about the life she once had, she had to pretend to be a rogue agent on the run. Nobody could find out she was pregnant. She was contemplating about pretending how her former life had never existed when her phone rang.

She read „McDreamy". The callerID Cristina had once put into her phone -the father of her children. Derek must have been trying to get Christopher to sleep, she thought. It was 8pm in Seattle – way past Christopher's usual bed time, but he had been fuzzy lately. Derek had called her almost everyday to get Christopher to sleep. Her voice calmed him down. She answered and it was indeed Derek who had tried everything for two hours, but Christopher wouldn't go to sleep. He had been asking for her. Meredith was sitting in the on call room by herself and sang lullabies. Derek was listening to them on the other side while he watched his son fall asleep. If she would have been sitting next to him, they would be the perfect family, she thought. Both of them knew that this wasn't an ideal situation. As time progressed Christopher had grow moren aware that Meredith wasn't around. While she sung her baby boy to bed, Meredith looked down on her belly thinking about when she would have to get bigger scrubs to cover up her belly. Her pants were already tight. People at the hospital would soon find out and once word was out, she thought that it would get back to Seattle sooner than she could think.

„Thank you Meredith" Derek was grateful. He missed hearing her voice.

„Derek, this is the last time we talk. I won't call you again and you won't call me. I'm fine and I know Christopher is going to be fine with you and you'll be fine on your own. You are better off without me." Meredith wanted to hang up, but stopped as he called out her Name.

„Meredith…" there was a hint as scare in his voice.

„It's fine Derek! Tell Christopher I love him". Meredith said. Pregnancies had never been their happiest time, but this time it was different. She didn't know what to do with the child she was expecting. She didn't want to talk to him again until she had figured out how she felt about that child.

„… Don't hang up." Derek begged her. He wanted to talk to her. „We have to talk"

„No, we don't. You have what you want… good bye…" she mumbled."Tell Chris I love him" Tears started to fill her eyes. If she ever wanted to make it outside of this Hospital on her own, it was what she had to do – at least for now. She had to figure out how to make it on her own. If only she wouldn't have so many nightmares – she had to leave those behind.

* * *

Meredith left the hospital. She wasn't on call and it was her night off anyway, she would have stayed in case there was some interesting case on trauma, but she needed time to think. She made her way to the harbour. When she was a teenager she had spent hours there without talking to anyone. People had looked down on her because she had worn black clothes and had dyed her hair pink, but this version of her had ceased to exist a long time ago. She was looking at the ferryboats and thinking about her and Derek. She wondered if he was wearing his ferryboat scrub cap. It would be easier to follow in her mom's footsteps, to keep quiet about that baby and to give it up for Adoption, but it felt wrong. Derek had a right to know. Christopher would grow up knowing she had left, but so had Jackson. She knew he'd be fine with him. She looked at her phone. She had told Derek that she wouldn't call again, but she needed somebody to talk to.

„Do you know that Derek ruined ferryboats for me?" she wondered when the person on the other side of the line picked up „I used to like ferryboats, Alex and Derek, he has a thing for ferryboats." She looked at the lights from the boats that reflected on the water.

„Mer, I don't know why you keep calling me. You are in Boston, you left, you chose to go to Boston and you keep asking me if it was right to go. Do you remember what you told me after Izzie died? if you live in a past dream, you don't enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is." Alex said „There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive and you are in Boston. Not enjoying what's happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. If there's something wrong with you, talk about it, tell me, but you haven't been willing to talk about whatever is going on with you. You can either move on or come back Mer, but don't keep thinking that there's a way to fix this mess while you are in Boston and Derek is here."

„Alex, it's different for me, Derek is still alive. He chose not to be with me, Izzie is dead." Meredith said. „It would be easier if he was"

„And she chose not to be with me while she wasn't." Alex reminded her. Izzie had left him and went to L.A. „Meredith, I wasted so much time pitying myself, crying, you don't have to do it. Come back to him or Forget about him, Forget this life, this Version of you, ever existed."

„I can't..I've had this amazing love and now it's gone. I lost it. It's gone forever, I screwed up and I can live with that." Meredith said „It's been the most perfect two years of my life, but I love my Job and I have to stay here if I want to become a surgeon."

„That's so much bullshit Mer. You have to face it, that's the only way you get through. You could have a lifetime with Derek and Christopher if you two would just start talking to each other again." Alex told her.

„Could have had." Meredith insisted as she looked at the ferryboats. „I have to stay here. I don't know if I'm strong enough to leave again when I come back."

„In that case you should stop calling anyone for a while, Mer." he said and Meredith realized he was right. If she wanted to Forget about Seattle, she had to Forget about Seattle, she had to Forget about the friends, the foes and all the Drama. She had to lie low a while. Nobody in Seattle could find out that she was pregnant. But was Alex right? Was she Standing in the way of her own happiness?

* * *

The next morning seemed to start badly. She was on Dr. Vonn's service again and they'd revisit the case of a patient whose breast implants had been taken out during Meredith's first week at MassGen. He had told her that the patient was very special and Meredith had no clue as to why any patient of Dr. Vonn would be special. All plastic surgeries were the same. The Patient had chosen their own suffering. He had promised her to let her scrub in on an interesting case, but Meredith wasn't quite sure what a plastic surgeon would consider to be interesting. The surgeon took her to a conference room where the charts were spread out over the table.

„What's so special about that patient?" Meredith wondered when she entered the room and saw the charts. Whatever procedure they were talking about -it seemed to require research.

„She wants to get pregnant and because of the lesions in her uterus it's not possible" Dr. Vonn said and handed over the file of their patient to her.

„What are you going to do, give her another uterus?" Meredith joked.

„That's not what I'm going to do" Dr. Vonn said and handed over the chart to her „but Dr. Montgomery is"

Hearing the name shocked Meredith. Just when she had decided to leave her past behind, it showed up at her doorstep. She looked surprised and stuttered „Dr. Montgomery? Addison Montgomery?"

Dr. Vonn thought that she was surprised due to Addison's stunning reputation. „Yes, you can be very lucky to get to work with her" her attending nodded „The Lady at the entrance desk paged me two minutes ago and she should be here…"

„Addison." Meredith interrupted him as Addison showed up at the door.

„Meredith" Addison said in surprise. She had not expected Meredith to be at MassGen and she had certainly not expected her to work with her after Derek had just spend a week drinking on her front porch.

„You know each other?" Dr. Vonn looked at both women. They seemed more than familiar with each other. He could not tell whether they were excited or shocked to see each other.

„My husband was her husband or my ex husband was her husband… or whatever" Addison explained. „It's really…"

„Oh, I…" Dr. Vonn mumbled.

„It's complicated" Meredith nodded. Just when she had decided to shut out anyone from her old life her husband's ex wife had shown up to work on a case with her.

* * *

Derek sat in the attendings lounge and was ripping pieces off the paper wrapper around his paper cup coffee. Owen looked at him. „You don't look happy." He concluded as Derek kept focusing on the paper cup instead of engaging in a conversation.

„I was going to tell her that I was ready to forgive her…" he said. „She told me that she'd walking away, that she'll sign custody over to me…" Two weeks ago he wouldn't have hesitated and agreed to the terms, but now he knew what it would mean to him. She had told him to stop calling and that she'd stop calling and he was sure that she would.

„And she cut all strings instead?" Owen asked puzzled. Cristina had not told him.

„Yeah!" Derek nodded.

„Do you know where she is?" Owen wondered. „I mean she should hear it."

„No, she wouldn't tell me." Derek said. „And I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to show up there after she told me to stop calling her"

„Find her, fly over and talk to her once you found out where she is." Owen said „Those words deserve to be spoken"

„I'm just afraid that she wouldn't be happy to see me. I mean she told me I'm supposed to stop calling her." Derek said and finally threw the paper wrap into the bin.

* * *

While Meredith was looking into Addison's eyes, Alex was looking at scans Arizona had put up in the viewing room. „What are these?" Alex wondered and looked at the scans. He'd die to get his hands on those patients.

„More scans from the clinic." Arizona said „They are trying to get me to come over."

„Are we going to fix those?" Alex wondered

„If you can get me on a plane to Malawi" Arizona nodded.

„Why can't you?" Alex wondered.

„Do you remember my fiancée, her child and the wedding she's planning?" Arizona asked him „I can't go. You could go, it would be beneficial to your career."

„You think I could do those?" Alex wondered.

„I think I trained you well enough. It'd be great for your career and I'd put you in a great position for the race for chief resident." Arizona tried to encourage him.

„That's a year away." Alex told her „I can't walk away from all the patients here"

„Yang is tough competition." Arizona insisted „and this type of Thing Looks great on your resume when you start to apply for Fellowship positions."

* * *

Dr. Vonn had left the conference room and Addison and Meredith looked at each other.

„I wanna punch you, Meredith!" Addison told her.

„I beg your pardon." Meredith said. She had no clue why Addison would be angry at her, but she figured that it had to do with Derek and Christopher.

„Derek Christopher Shepherd." Addison said „Don't let him get away and don't let him be the sole parent to Christopher."

„He chose to go." Meredith said even though she knew that technically this wasn't true. She left, but he had done little to none to stop her.

„You are the one that is living in Boston.- without him and without your son" Addison said. „Why did you leave them?"

„Why did you stay with him?" Meredith wondered. She knew how lonely both of them must have felt towards the end of their marriage and she knew that she'd rather feel alone while not being with somebody than feel lonely in a marriage.

„I knew that Derek would never hurt me." Addison said. Derek had always been her knight in shinning armour. He had been the perfect man, everybody had told her so. He just hadn't been perfect for her.

„He hurt me. – and I hurt him. We hurt each other." Meredith said. She had been shattered into pieces. She was unable to trust anybody. „But I guess Derek is not the kind of guy you leave when you can help it, I couldn't."

„But we never had what you have." Addison said. She knew that he had never looked at her the way he looked at Meredith.

„Had. What we had." Meredith insisted.

„No, have, he's been miserable and he was never miserable when we fought. He was indifferent. He really cares about you." Addison smiled and sat down. „Meredith, when you don't get mad at each other it's not love."

„He doesn't want to talk to me. Last time we talked he said if he's dead to me I'm dead to him… and…" Meredith paused. She hated that either Lexie or Alex had told him that she had dreamt that he was dead and he had been angry about her dream. After that the only words they had exchanged were bare necessities when it came to talking to Christopher or about him. „I told him to stop calling"

„He's stubborn and an idiot and he has been getting drunk on my porch for about a week until I got Mark to kick him out. He'll never get over you." Addison said. „and ruining your relationship over what happened…"

„Well, I can get over him." Meredith said sounding like this was an attempt to convince herself.

„Do you think so?" Addison said and handed over a file to her „Look at this uterus, if I'm not careful I can't attach it, one wrong move and it won't work, but if I work it out, this woman might have a baby."

„And that's a miracle." Meredith said and looked at the chart of a woman that had successfully received a new Uterus.

„I hope you got better since we've been in an OR together the last time. Why don't you try to attach this part?" Addison asked and pointed to the Picture „You have to be very gentle and very clean and we'll get a chance to talk."

* * *

Richard sat in his office when Derek walked in. He knew that in order to win Meredith back he had to make Things right with Richard. The Chief looked up from the papers that were spread in front of him „I could have had a child. when she came here, I didn't want her here, she was the reminder of the best and worst years of my life, she was the spitting image of her mother and right now somewhere in this country there's a girl I could have been a father for." He told Derek and looked at a picture of him, Ellis and Meredith in a park. It must have been taken a few weeks before their ways had parted forever.

„More than one, Richard." Derek nodded „Whatever happened between you and Ellis is not Meredith fault, Richard."

Richard knew why Derek was in his Office. The faces changed, their objective was the same. Alex, Lexie, George, Jackson, Derek and Dr. Bailey had been petitioning him to give Meredith her Job back ever since she had left „I don't have much leverage with the ratings being the way they are."

Derek looked at him in disbelief.„And you wouldn't want to hire a new chief of neurosurgery either. Chris needs her. I..."

„Derek, the board fired her." Richard interrupted him, but Derek knew this was bullshit.

„I don't care what the board did! My wife is on the other side of the country and our son is struggling with it because I pressured her into leaving him with me and a one year old doesn't understand why his mommy is gone. You ruined her life once." Derek reminded him.

„She did all the ruining by herself this time." Richard said.

„She didn't know anything about the adoption and she didn't do anything her friends haven't done. She didn't cut an LVAD wire like Stevens, she didn't kill a patient, she wasn't operating on someone without their consent or authorization. It might have been wrong, but you could have fought for her. Her only fault is that she shows too much compassion for the people around her." Derek said. One of Meredith's qualities he had always admired was her compassion. When he had met with their lawyer about Zola's Adoption he had pointed out that everything was hanging by a threat for as Long as Meredith was out-of-state.

„Derek, she overstepped." Richard sighed. „There got to be rules."

„Why can't you forgive her for what Ellis did?" Derek wondered. „You blame her for a choice you made"

„Why can't you forgive her for what she did?" Richard asked. He was unaware of Derek's intentions to make Things up with her.

„I'm trying to. Nothing that happened was Meredith fault. Meredith wanted to help Callie because she knows what it feels like to look at your child, to love your child. That feeling that you would sacrifice anything in the world to make your child happy and to give it everything it needs and deserves. She loves Christopher so much, she left because she has grown up without her dad and she didn't want that for Christopher." Derek said „Because she wanted to give him what she didn't have… . You made a promise and Ellis left Thatcher, Meredith lost the only person that was actually taking care of you because you chose to do what you thought everyone would consider the right thing and now nothing changed, instead of standing up for a young talented resident you feed her to the wolves"

„She's working at Mass. Gen now, that's hardly a…" Richard blared out before he realized that he had just revealed Information he wasn't legally allowed to reveal. Meredith had transfered to one of the top Hospitals in the Country, not 12th.

„She's in Boston? She went to Boston. Like Ellis?" Derek was surprised, to say the least. „And Mass. Gen.? Christ, Harper Avery is actively embedding the dissolution of my marriage."

„It's what she knows how to do. They asked for the transfer papers last week." Richard said. The damage had been done. He might as well tell her husband where she was now. He knew anyway.

* * *

Arizona and Callie sat in the living room. Arizona was looking through medical Journals while Callie was focusing on her red ball. Putting it into her left hand, throwing it against the wall and catching it with the right hand, she repeated the routine over and over again. Bam, bam, very time the ball touched the wall, Arizona looked up.

„Stop throwing the freaking ball Callie." She spat out „I'm trying to work here."

„I'm doing therapy, it's very therapeutic." Callie said and stopped throwing the ball. „I cancelled the appointment at the botique."

„Why Callie?" Arizona dropped the Magazine.

„Because I don't deserve to get married and Meredith cancelled on me, she said she was on call this Weekend and .." Callie explained. Meredith had written her a text message that she couldn't make it.

„Cristina and Lexie would have still been there." Arizona smiled „Is it because of the scar"

„No, it's because I still can't lift my arm up like I want to." Callie said and tried to raise her arm, but after she had reached a certain level it dropped.

* * *

Derek sat in the lab and looked through the microscope. He sighed and looked at the clock on the wall. He grabbed his Pager and pressed a few Buttons. He didn't want to be alone. His Research assistant had left two hours ago.

„What do you want?" Lexie wondered after Derek had paged her to the lab. She was on call and wondered what he wanted her to do. She knew that he and the other Researchers tried to grow brain tissue and distinct brain Areas by using stem cells.

„I can't get it to work, we've been trying to get those cells to form a connection. It doesn't work and I keep wondering whether that's a sign, whether there is a way to get them to form a bond and …" he paused „Meredith is in Boston. I should do what…"

„Do you want her to be happy?" Lexie interrupted him „If you do, you will realize that she had to go to Boston to be able to be happy again – one day."

„I want her to be happy, but I want to be the reason she's happy." Derek said. „I want to be happy with her"

„Don't you think that's selfish?" Lexie wondered and read the instructions in front of Derek. „If she comes back, she doesn't have a Job"

„Don't you think that's romantic?" Derek smirked. „We could move to Boston. I could work at Harvard or MIT or I don't have to work at all for a while"

„No, because you should never let yourself be defined by someone else." Lexie said. „Your happiness should be yours."

„It's been two months and I still cry myself to sleep or stay awake being angry at her for leaving, I stopped being mad at her for lying to the social worker and started being mad at her for not being here" he admitted „I wish she would have fought harder"

„You pushed her away Derek." Lexie reminded him. „She wouldn't have left if…"

„She walked away, she walked away so easily and never looked back" he said looking at the cells n the petri dish under his microscope. Whatever he tried, the stem cells didn't form a three dimensional structure.

„Do you really think so Derek? You two should talk." Lexie said and observed him. He kept focusing on the cells and compared two different dishes „I miss her. I have nobody to talk to since she left and Molly is on the other side of the planet.."

„I need her." Derek cut her off. „We both need her."

* * *

Dr. Vonn walked into the scrub room while Addison and Meredith exchanged weird looks. Meredith knew Addison would question her about every tiny detail of what had happened. looked at them. „Dr. Burns, I was wondering whether you'd…" he started, but Addison interrupted him.

„Dr. Burns is busy discussing the loss of her husband with me." she said and looked at the attending with a stern look.

„You're a widow?" Dr. Vonn wondered „I thought he was dead to you. Oh my god, and I was such an ass to you… you came here, you moved across the country because your husband was dead. I'm so so sorry."

„It's okay, I came here because I wanted to be treated like any other person. I'll be fine." Meredith said and he left.

Addison looked at her again. „Really? Make him believe that Derek's dead?" she asked her.

„You made him believe Derek's dead." Meredith said „And I'm not talking to him, so he might as well be dead. It wouldn't make a difference."

„Damn right, it would. Christopher would be here and you'd have noone Meredith, you'd have nobody." Addison said. But Meredith would have somebody, in a year she wouldn't be alone if she decided to keep it.

„I have surgery – and tequila." She said „Well, not so much Tequila right now, but I'll have Tequila."

„Meredith, meet me at 8.00 pm. You, Maria and I are going to have dinner at ‚the outlook'" Addison told her.

„I can't really say no, can I?" Meredith smiled and they both walked into the OR.

* * *

Arizona stood at Callie's side of the bed. Despite her appointment with her physical therapist, Callie was still sleeping. It was time for tough love. „You might be broken right now, but I'm not afraid to get cut while glueing back together the pieces." Arizona said and threw Callie's blanket to the side.

„I hate you." Callie mumbled and tried to get it back.

„I know. But you and me will dance, we are going to have the most beautiful wedding and you and me we are going to dance- we'll be surrounded by our friends and family and we'll dance and you are going to be the most beautiful bride I've ever seen." Arizona kissed her „Get up, Callie."

* * *

The OR had been her hideout, but this surgery felt like torture. Addison was talking about pregnancies and uteruses and her patients a lot, she went on about how perfect her life in L.A. Meredith cursed herself for having to listen to that. And wondered whether Addison had noticed something. She was still unaware that Addison and Mark had broken up. As the hours progressed and the nurses left the OR to be replaced by others their conversation got more personal. The Topics shifted from uterine trnasplants to relationships and Meredith caught herself wishing that the paint in front of them would suddenly Need their full Attention, but his vitals remained as stable as they had expected.

„You can't pretend to be happy, you can't force it, but if you are happy you shouldn't run away from it." Addison told her and Meredith wondered how much Addison actually knew about their break up. Meredith looked up at her and looked into her eyes „Mark and I broke up." Addison mumbled. Wow, Meredith's eyes widened for a second. Addison had not been talking about her.

„Why?" Meredith wondered.

„I don't know. I just…" Addison tried to find an Explanation, but Meredith knew how she felt and asked „Felt like running?"

„No, it just didn't feel right, we were both trying to hard." Addison said „It shouldn't feel like work all the time."

„Alright" Meredith smiled. She sensed that there was more to Addison's decsion. „so how are things with your practice?"

„Fine, I'm thinking off a cooperation with an awesome reproductive medicine expert." Addison said „He referred the case to me."

„Reproductive medicine?" Meredith wondered.

„Jake Riley, he's amazing credentials and we met at the supermarket. I sort of had a mental breakdown before I went there." Addison sighed. She had shown him two pineapples and had worn a Sweater with Baby vomit on it.

„Why?" Meredith wondered.

„Mark was at the hospital and Maria cried for like 10 consecutive hours and I…" Addison said.

„I know the impulse." Meredith smiled. „Is he the reason you left Mark?"

„Why did you leave Christopher with Derek?" Addison tried to divert the question.

„He loves him and my mother took me to Boston… and… oh my god…" Meredith paused „I think I know why I did it… I needed a reason to go back. Do you think that's the reason my mom took me with her? Because she was afraid she'd go and see Richard again if she would have left me with Thatcher?". Addison remained silent and finished the last stitches.

* * *

„Addison, what would you do if you found out you were pregnant with Mark's baby? I mean you still love him, don't you?"  
„I wouldn't go back to him, he isn't the man who gives me the feeling to be the most loved woman in the world- and that's what the right man makes you feel like. It's not his fault I don't feel that way. Mark didn't do anything wrong, he's... he's just not the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and"  
„... it took you L.A. to realize that?"  
„No, I always hoped he'd stay in Seattle and make things easier for me."  
„But he loves Maria."  
„He loves her with everything he has. You almost wouldn't belive that it's Mark when he's around her. He's perfect with her - he's the perfect man around her. And he'd be the perfect parent to any child. He's a good man and I love him and want him to be happy."

„And you know he wouldn't be happy with you."

„He's in love with Lexie Grey and I'm pretty sure your sister is in love with him and the only two people two people who don't know about that are Mark and Lexie."  
„You walked away so he can figure out for himself that he wants to be with my sister?"  
„I don't know why every man I fall in love with has a thing for Grey's. Honestly, Meredith, if you have another sister, just tell me now so we can get things over with - and I'll introduce the next guy to her before any further damage is done."

„Why is starting over so hard? I mean, I tried… I really tried… but I Keep thinking about him, I can't stop thinking about him. It's like something in my brain tells me to Keep thinking about him. I want it to stop. How can you do it? How can you walk away from him?"

„I just let go. Jake makes me happy."

* * *

Meredith drove to the hospital. She looked at her pager and quickly got changed in the hallway. She looked at the intern in front of her who starred at her. Any attentive observer would have noticed her bump, but apparently the intern was overworked enought to miss this tiny Detail. „Oh my God, that's the woman you said shouldn't be discharged" the intern mumbled when two ER doctors wheeled in the patient on a gurney.

„What happened?" Meredith approached the gurney and looked at the ER doctor.

„Unexplained syncope, she's tachychardic." He said and handed over the chart to her.

„Jason, get the file for me and look at the ECG" Meredith told the intern while Maggie approached the gurney.

„What do you want me to look for?" The intern wondered while Meredith checked the patient's vitals.

„A-fib without TdP. Look if there's a Delta wave" she told him and handed over the stetoscope to a nurse.

„Are you looking for zebras now?" Maggie wondered. She instantaniously recognized the woman. Dr. Highs had monitored her while she had been here for observation.

„Yes" Meredith nodded. It was time for zebras „Wolff Parkinson White syndrome"

Maggie looked at her. „And you could be right, oh my god, how did Dr. Highs miss that?" she wondered and the intern handed over the last ECG record to her. „Look at the QRS complex and the PR interval. Get her into an OR."

„What are you doing?" Meredith looked up. She hadn't expected an emergency surgery. The woman's heart rate had almost returned to normal and she seemed stable.

„She's at risk for SCD, we have to remove the bundle of Kent." Maggie said. She had missed this once before, she wouldn't miss this again. During her intern year a teenage girl had died of SCD and it had been her fault, at least that's what she had told herself.

„You want to perform catheter ablation on a Patient that isn't stable?" Meredith wondered.

„She'll be in v-fib in about 25 minutes." Maggie said while checking on the patient.

„How do you know?" the intern wondered.

„She just does." Meredith said „Page someone else from cardio."

„Thanks for having my back there" Maggie said when they started to insert the catheter into a vein.

„Why are we here? They could have treated her with amiodarone or procainamide." Meredith wanted to know.

„And she wouldn't live to see another day if we did that." Maggie said.

„Have you performed this procedure before?" Meredith wondered. Usually residents were monitored very closely at Mass Gen.

„No, but I watched it and I know how to move a catheter through a vein, Meredith. So which vein do you use?" Maggie wondered and looked at the intern who was standing next to Meredith.

„Subclavian I'd say." He guessed.

„Alright, you haven't killed the Patient." Maggie smiled „Intern, what are we doing now?"

„I don't know." He admitted.

„Well, you better think" Maggie said.

Meredith looked at the monitors. Maggie had been right „V-Fib" she notified them.

„Alright, give me the paddles" Maggie said and the intern started with compressions until the paddles had been charged. After the first try they had a Sinus rhythm.

„You got her back, how did you know?" Meredith wondered while another surgeon came in. Meredith and Maggie looked up from the table.

„I was paged to the OR." Harper Avery said and looked at the two young surgeons.

„Dr. Avery, I got it." Maggie said. „She's stable."

„What are you planning to do?" he wondered and sat down on a stool next to Maggie.

„She came in tarchycardic. She has been here for observation before and looking at her ECG Dr. Burns diagnosed her with Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome, which I agree on. We took her to an OR because I thought she was at risk for SCD." Maggie summarized the situation.

„Good call, Dr. Pierce. Can I have the pleasure of watching you two?" Jackson's grandfather wondered.

* * *

 _The thing people forget is how good it can feel when you finally set secrets free. Whether good or bad, at least they're out in the open, like it or not. And once your secrets are out in the open, you don't have to hide behind them anymore. The problem with secrets is even when you think you're in control, you're not._

 _._

* * *

Meredith and Jackson's grandfather stood in the OR. It was 2.00 am and the OR gallery was empty, the nurses had left after the patient had been brought to post op„You and Jackie published a paper together." Jackson's grandfather said with a smile on his face. Jackson and Meredith had written a paper about their approach in dissecting a tumor by taking out the organs and using artificial grafts to improve visibility. It wasn't ground breaking, but they had been published.

„You heard about it?" Meredith wondered. She wondered if he had heard about it because Jackson had been involved or if he would have read the article if it had been published by somebody else.

„I read it, I'm pretty sure everyone at the foundation did." He nodded „The names Avery and Grey create buzz in the medical community. Even if you choose not to use it."

„Yes, and Jackson hates it. And I hate it." Meredith replied. „It's hard enough to prove yourself as a surgeon, but it's even harder if you constantly have to prove that you are not there because of your last name. It's better now, I don't get picked for surgeries because of mom's last name."

„You remind me of your mother. She never wanted anything from anyone." He told her. Meredith disagreed, Ellis had wanted Richard's love, but she had Chosen his wife. She looked at him and he said something surprising. „She can be proud to have daughters like you."

„Daughters? You know? You know her?" Meredith wondered. She was confused. While Jackson's grandfather might have known about the adoption, she was surprised that he knew more about Ellis' child.

„You have been working with her, Dr. Burns. She grew up a block away from where you lived with your mother. Catherine was friends with her mother at the time of the adoption." He smiled. „I thought you should know"

„Maggie's gifted." Meredith smiled. Maggie! Maggie used to be a Grey, for a very short period of time. All this time Maggie had been so close and Meredith had been so caught up in her own mess. She had met the one Grey that seemed to have been raised right.

„She'll be the youngest fellow of this hospital. She certainly has your mother's hands." He confirmed „And from what I saw today, you are the spitting Image of you mother in more than one way. Except that you are stronger than she was."

„What do you mean?" Meredith wondered.

„You had the strength of leaving your child behind." He said.

„Derek threatened to report me for Kidnapping." Meredith giggled.

„Meredith, you and me both know that this isn't the reason. Ellis was never strong enough to live without you." He reassured her.

„She resented me. She thought I was the reason that he didn't chose her and that she shouldn't have ever had kids." Meredith looked at him. „Is that the reason Jackson's dad left?"

„How do you know she regreted to have you?" the surgeon asked her.

„She said so." Meredith said. She had said it when Meredith had tried to calm her down a few weeks before she had died.

„People say a lot of things when they are afraid to face the real reason for their actions. I blamed Jackson's dad for leaving, when.." he said and paused.

„It was on him, he chose to leave and I chose to leave. I thought things would be easier, but they aren't." Meredith shrugged.

„Why?" Harper Avery wanted to find out.

„Because just because you are somewhere else doesn't mean what happened in the past didn't happen. I still wish they were here." Meredith looked at the Instruments in front of her.

„It never stops." Jackson's grandfather suggested. He was still wondering where his son was and why he had chosen to leave in the end. The fight they had had the night before he had left hadn't been the first and it hadn't been the most serious.

„What happened to Jackson's dad?" Meredith wondered. Jackson had never told her the story.

„He left one day and never came back. He and about half of Jackson's trust found." The surgeon said „He felt like I stole from him and he decided to steal from his own son. To this day I'm angry about it, but I still wonder what would happen if he showed up at my door. I told him he wasn't worthy of being an Avery and he left. If I could take back those words, I would. Jackie had to grow up without a father"

„and it isn't easy." Meredith nodded „A kid is happier when both parents are around."


	34. Chapter 34

I know some of you are going to be really really angry at me after reading this chapter, but it's all going to make sense a few chapters down the line. Thanks to everyone who took their time to review! I love to read your comments! Sorry I couldn't update earlier, but my schedule is going to be a lot lighter now! No more overtime!

DarkandTwistyGrey: Thanks so much! Glad you enjoy it!  
greysfann: This chapter is going to shed some light on where Meredith is headed  
Patsy: I feel like Jackson's past is a chapter worth exploring, that's the reason I introduced his grandpa. I agree, he's an excellent mentor. We'll see where Meredith is going. Maybe she'll realize that fate is always going to bring them back together.  
Kiley: They really do need to communicate - and maybe they do need how to work together.  
Jill: Thanks! Hope you keep reading!  
Shelley: Meredith won't be pregnant the next time she's in Seattle. But maybe Derek moves a little faster ;)  
Clarice: Hope you enjoy this one! Addison showing up will have an impact on the story.  
Dora: This chapter is a little fluffier. Hope you won't need tissue now.  
Susan: Meredith is going to think about all the possibilities in her life and maybe things are happening sooner than she imagined.  
Darlene: Thanks so much for the review! She might not come to Seattle, but she'll find out about Renee soon.  
Lynette: Thanks for your review! 34 is a rather light chapter before things go cray cray in 35.  
Elizabeth: Thank you for your review! I'm glad you enjoyed my story so far and hope you stay around for the ride ahead.  
Melanie: Meredith is stubborn and the intensity of all the secrets she's carrying around is going to start to impact her soon. 

* * *

**Chapter 3** 4

 _The reason I like staying up late so much is because between the hours of 1am to 5am, the world is quiet and no one expects anything from me. I could stare at my wall for 4 hours and there would be no consequences. It's so silent and calm. – Well, unless you are working the night shift at a hospital. Everything I just said changes when you are working the night shift. If you work the night shift your day starts backwards. You wake up tired and go to bed wide awake. Those late hours where you entertain the what ifs are what changes everything._

* * *

„Dr. Grey, you can always take a few days off and sort things out in Seattle" Dr. Avery suggested.

„If I would fly to Seattle we would fight or we talk about fighting and I'm tired of fighting, and I don't want to talk anymore." Meredith declined. She'd have to tell him that she was pregnant and they'd have to talk about a lot of things. „I don't want to leave him, but I definitely can't be with him right now. I miss Christopher, but it's right for him to be with Derek." She wasn't ready.

„When Jackson's father left, it was my fault, it was a few months before Ellis came in for the interview." Harper Avery told her „I never made him feel like he was good enough. I always wonder whether it would have changed something if I had told him of how proud I had been, he was never top of his class academically, but he had other qualities. Jackson always felt like it was his fault" Meredith had never heard about the circumstances surrounding the departure of Jackson's dad, but listened attentively. „Jackson's mother had to raise him on her own. Jackson was in the gallery as much as you were and Catherine got involved with the foundation. She was the daughter I never thought I could have – she exceded every expectation - and she tried to make up for everything."

„Does Jackson know how you feel?" Meredith wondered „He always felt like all of you thought he was stupid."

„Surgeons don't talk about their feelings, do they?" Jackson's granddad admitted „He never told us he took the MCAT until he got the results"

„I figured this much. Tell him, he's struggling with being your grandson" Meredith told him „I never knew how to deal with everything my mom achieved. When I was in med School, she was everywhere – en vogue- it's hard."

„Dr. Burns" Meredith looked up to Jackson's granddad „ asked me to tell you that he still thinks you are the perfect candidate. He was impressed by your emergency craniotomy. I tend to agree."

* * *

 _John Hopkins_

 _\- 4 years later_

 _Meredith wore lavender scrubs – those scrubs were part of the reason she had accepted the attending position at John Hopkins. Harper Avery's recommendation had opened every door of every hospital to her after she had completed her neuro fellowship, but she had chosen John Hopkins for a reason. She was running late for a staff meeting when she literally bumped into someone familiar._

 _„Derek" she said when she looked up. She hadn't seen him ever since she had left Seattle after Callie's wedding and he still looked the same and he was wearing lavender scrubs too, which meant that he was either in for a consult or working here._

 _„Meredith…" he said hesitantly „I didn't realize…" He had checked the staff list and except Dr. Karev he had seen no name that seemed familiar. What was she doing here?_

 _„Oh, it's my first day and I'm late which isn't what you want to be on your first day, but Lizzie didn't want me to leave. She hasn't settled in at daycare the way I hoped she would. Ellis has been acting up lately." Meredith said. Ellis had taken up all her free time in the past three years, but assuming Derek had taken care of Christopher on his own she thought Derek knew all about the struggles of a single parent._

 _„You moved on…" Derek said jumping to the wrong conclusions._

 _„I didn't. It just happened" Meredith said and tried to find out what he was doing „Why are you here? A consult? Working on another Trial? Winning another Harper Avery?" Derek had won a Harper Avery Award for his brain cell trial and the procedure he had developed using the findings of the trial. Meredith had been at the award ceremony and Ellis had seen her father's winning speech from afar. She had made sure that Derek wouldn't see them._

 _„They offered Chief to me." Derek said. „They want to announce it at the staff meeting."_

 _„Oh." Meredith said. He was her boss again. „How's Chris?"_

 _„He'll start School in a fortnight. He's in daycare" Derek said and looked at his clock while they both walked to the assembly room „So when do I get to meet your daughter's father?"_

 _„He's not in the picture so much these days." Meredith said truthfully. „He only found out about her existence very recently."_

 _Derek looked surprised „You must have had her…"_

 _„During my first year in Boston, yeah." Meredith nodded „You have a speech to do or whatever". He nodded and they went into the assembly room. Thankfully all eyes were on Derek, Meredith thought to herself._

* * *

Lexie and Jackson looked at the stars in the night sky wishing they were shooting stars. Neither of them said a word. The air was clear and it was cold enough to see your breath. „It's quiet out here." Lexie said while she and Jackson looked at the illuminated town.

„My favourite place in the hospital. It's like time freezes." He said and thought of all the times he and April had been up here „And you notice how insignificant you are. When I was a kid I used to go up to the roof and watch the ambulances coming in. It's like they come and go in their very own choreography."

„Not only time freezes…when you just look at the city, you and your problems seem so insignificant." Lexie said. „It's freezing"

„Do you want my jacket?" Jackson smiled and walked up to where Lexie stood. He had started to unzip his jackets when she stopped him.

„No, I'm fine." Lexie looked at him. Feeling cold meant Feeling something. „The city looks so peaceful… and look at the stars… like … I don't know, like nothing could go wrong, like you are stuck in this Moment forever. It seems like the perfect moment"

„And all the worries seem so small." Jackson nodded.

„What does Harper Avery's grandson have to worry about?" Lexie wondered and looked at Jackson. Even in the cold he looked incredibly hot.

„Everything" Jackson said and looked around. „I miss them. George is totally involved with Sofia and his mom, which I totally understand, April has left, Mer left and I feel alone. I never connected with Karev or Yang."

„Nobody connects with Yang except her." Lexie joked. „Mer still doesnt answer her phone"

„My grandpa said she's fine." Jackson rolled his eyes. „He likes to talk about her"

* * *

The second pregnancy felt a lot different than the first. Meredith knew what to expect, she knew how her Body would Change, but she felt just as tired and exhausted as she had felt during her first one. All her maternity clothes were still in Seattle and it'd raise too many questions to ask anyone to send them over. Her scrub patns were getting tighter. She was starring at the mattress of the top bunk.

„How do you know him?" Maggie who was in the room too wondered.

„That's too long of a story to tell. It involves husbands, coworkers and a life I left behind. Everything was so perfect, like a fairytale. But as it turns out fairytales end when they do for a reason." Meredith said. Fairytales were never as twisted and complicated and the characters never felt conflicted.

„So he knows about your husband?" Maggie wondered.

„… it's complicated. I thought I had found him." Meredith kept rambling.

„You miss him." Maggie said „But, Dr. Avery and you, you two have been in the OR together a lot and you seem to have history. Are you his granddaughter or something? He hasn't mentored anyone since his son left and…"

„No, I'm not his granddaughter. We are not related. I met his grandson. I know his grandson and he knew my mother" Meredith said. Those Statements were safe. „Right now it feels good not to be someone's wife or mother or doctor when I go home. I kind of like it."

„You can always talk to me…" Maggie sat down next to Meredith „I like you, you talk to me like I am a normal person, not like I'm the child prodigy. I wish I had met you earlier."

„Try being Ellis' Grey's daughter or Harper Avery's grandson." Meredith laughed and cursed herself for even saying it. If Maggie knew who her mother was this Statement would come of incredibly suspicous.

„I never knew he had a grandson and I'm surprised he told you about me. Ellis Grey was my birth mom..." Maggie said. She had caught on.

„Well he does." Meredith said and looked at Maggie „When did you find out?"

„A while ago." Maggie said. There was a Moment of silence. A Moment where Meredith tried to get herself to reveal her identity to Maggie, but Maggie's word got out first. „She has a daughter – you know- she had a child when she gave me up for Adoption. Makes you wonder why. Makes you wonder who the dad is."

Meredith hesitated. She had most of the answers Maggie was looking for, but she wasn't ready to have another sister. Even though she had bounded with Maggie all the Drama between Ellis and Richard and Richard and her wasn't ready to be tackled. She had a child to deal with – more than one.

„She died two years ago. I wanted to find out more, but all I found out is that she has a daughter that is five years older than me. Her Name is meredith too."

„What did you find out about her?" Meredith asked innocently.

„Nothing" Maggie said „I figured that I didn't Need to know, I have a wonderful Family."

„Dr. Springer wants me to be on his Trial" Meredith said.

* * *

 _The nurses were gossiping behind his back and Derek tried to eavesdrop on their conversation to figure out what jind of gossip it was. He had only been Chief for a few hours and there was already an unbelievable amount of secrecy surround him „I'm telling you, when I dropped of Ethan at daycare, I saw them dropping off their kids, she looks like him and he looks like her, it's crazy. And word is they've both been working together and they were married." Derek rolled his eyes. Some things never changed._

 _„If this was true, why would they choose to work together?" the other one wondered and Derek asked himself the same question even though he had only found out that morning that Meredith had been offered a position by the retired Chief of surgery._

 _„For the Kids, because they didn't know the other one was working here. What do I know about them?" the first nurse answered while Derek wondered whom they were talking about, but he needed to focus on himself now, in twenty minutes he'd perform his first surgery as Chief of surgery and he was nervous, but he also wondered how Meredith was doing. According to the OR booking system she was working on a trauma case at the minute. A blunt head Trauma._

* * *

The lab equipment MassGen used for trials and research was remarkable. Meredith looked at the research facilities that were assigned to the neurology and neurosurgery departments. The trial was still in its early stages, but Dr. Springer needed help. Dr. Springer and Meredith had just operated on an emergency when he took her on a tour through the hospital. „They taught you excellent bed side manner in Tacoma. The way you handled that patient was remarkable – certainly not something you'd expect from a third year resident." Dr. Springer told her after she had talked down an emergency patient who had been taken for a CT. He had been brought in from a close by nursing home.

„My mother had Alzheimers, Dr. Springer. Early onset. She didn't want anyone to know. She made the home sign a contract to that effect. I was the only one who knew. She called me because I was the only one she had." Meredith said „I had to calm her down a lot"

„How is she?" Dr. Springer wondered.

„She's dead, she died of a heart attack during my intern year. She hasn't been too compliant with her medication." Meredith sighed. „I have to go, Mr. Keller asked me to call his daughter."

„By the way, can you look at those scans for me and tell me what you see?" he wondered and handed over a chart.

Was this a test Meredith wondered to herself. „Tricky, looks like a meningioma" she said „One might go for a craniotomy, but I think it'd be doable to but if you take a transspenoial approach. It's doable, but I would have to get more detailed pictures if I had to tell you more. Am I on that case?"

„That's exactly what he wrote down." Dr. Springer said.

„Do you agree?" Meredith wondered „Who is he?"

„I'm surprised you know so much about neurosurgery at this stage of your residency. Fine, I'm going to show you the lab and I'm going to tell Dr. Shepherd that I finally found someone who is interested". Dr. Springer said.

„Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith's eyes had widened.

„Dr. Derek Shepherd. He's working at Seattle Grace Mercy West. He's been working with the University of Washington on this and needed a second opinion." Dr. Springer said. „Do you know Dr. Shepherd? Tacoma isn't that far from Seattle Grace and I'm sure your hospital referred a lot of their more difficult cases to Seattle Grace."

She was working on Derek's Trial. How was that going to work out? „We talked. A few times. He might not remember it, but I do. He made quite an Impression." Meredith stuttered „Do you think he can pull of the transnasal approach?"

„I don't think he can do it, it's risky." He said.

Derek had shared her assessment „It's growing." Meredith said. „It's now or never"

„What I like about Dr. Shepherd: He likes to do the impossible and most of the time he's right to have tried." Dr. Springer looked at her. „I always prefered research to surgery"

* * *

 _After he had closed up the patient one of the nurses looked at him „Dr. Shepherd, daycare paged 911". His pager had went off twice during the last five minutes and it wasn't the first time Christopher had been a trouble maker. He had almost gotten suspended from the daycare at Seattle Grace „What is this boy up to now? Christopher Mark Shepherd, when are things ever going to get easier with you?" he mumbled to himself „Dr. Edwards, you can close up for me."_

 _Derek walked into the hospital daycare expecting to find his son, but instead the daycare worker was trying to console a wavy black haired girl. „Dr. Shepherd, she's been crying." The lady said._

 _„Wrong child, I don't know this kid." Derek said looking confused at the daycare worker. „I'm Christopher's dad."_

 _„Oh, her name is Elisabeth Shepherd, must have been a mix up" she said „I thought…"_

 _Ellis. Meredith had mentioned that her daughter was named Ellis. „Ellis?" he asked her „Did you just say Ellis?"_

 _„Yeah, Dr. Grey brought her in this morning." The Lady said „But we couldn't get her. She's in surgery."_

 _The girl turned around and tears were still runnning down her cheek. „Daddy." She said. It seemed like Meredith had told his daughter about him. She had the Shepherd hair and the Shepherd nose, there was no need for a DNA test. Meredith hadn't lied when she had told him that the father had only found out about Ellis very recently. He had another child -and the mother hadn't told him about her._

* * *

Meredith looked at Dr. Springer who was presenting the specifics of the study to her. The study wanted to focus on the creating of lifelike tissue cultures of neurons and related cells to study brain function, disease and repair. If they managed to create a cultured cell model that mimiced the brain's natural architecture, they'd be able to look at how certain diseases occur and screen potential medication in a more natural environment. Meredith had been working on something similiar at summer school in L.A. the summer before she finished med school. Back than a group of neuroengineers had developed a three dimensional brain tissue culture to study Alzheimer's disease.

Meredith looked at the table and smiled at Dr. Springer. She had done this before, during her first year of med School she had been in the lab for nights. She had lied to Saddie about where she went and she had supported a professor on her research project. „Stem cells have an amazing ability to self-organize" he said and told her about his plan to coax cultures neurons to take on a three dimensional organization bei using cell-friendly scaffolding materials in the cultures.

„And you want to let the neuron progenitors control their own fate?" Meredith wondered. She knew that there had been some success with eyes structures and liver buds, but they had been relatively primitive compared to what Dr. Springer was aspiring to create. It was a wonderful project and as there was no radiation or other harmful substances involved, it'd be a great side project during her pregnancy.

* * *

 _„We have a child, Meredith. When were you going to tell me?" Derek yelled at Meredith in the scrub room. Her Patient had died, but he had no attending of letting her off the hook easily because of it._

 _„Christopher didn't recognize me when I saw him at daycare. Ellis knows who you are." Meredith said._

 _„Oh, that's definitely what I wanted. I was paged to daycare because you were in surgery and the Person telling me that she was mine was the daycare Lady." Derek screamed._

 _„I was going to tell you" Meredith insisted.._

 _„You are four years late telling me." He said and left the room. He knew. She had done everything to avoid him, but the universe had brought them back together. She wished that she would have lied about Ellis dad in the Registration form, but she had filled it out before she had known he was going to work here and she had figured if anything ever happened to her, she'd want Ellis to be with Derek._

* * *

Renee was standing in the tea kitchen of the research lab. She had tried every imaginable set up, but things weren't working out. She was angry, frustrated and tearful. Her research had hit a wall. She threw her coffee cup into the sink and broke it, when Derek interrupted her and wondered „Are you okay, Renee?"

„Sorry for breaking the Cup" she apologized about the cup and watched him come closer to her.

„I'm not worried about the cup" Derek said and looked at her. She had been in the lab as much as he had been„Do you want to talk about it?"

„I've been measuring up the levels of activities in nerve cells for days. I've been patching and patching and looking for abnormalities, but there are none. Nothing." She said „I'm wasting my time."

Derek nodded and smiled. There had been times where he had felt like this. He would have given up before his breakthrough on the glioma trial if it hadn't been for Meredith. „You know why you feel this way, because you're close. You're very close to a break-through." He encouraged her „You want it. You want to break through so bad you have to break something."

Renee looked at him in surprise. He was very persuasive, and she was drawn to him. For a moment they both looked into each other's eyes. They were all alone and it was the middle of the night.

„I'll replace the Cup." Renee promised and her eyes kept focusing on his. For the first time she noticed how beautiful his eyes were.

„Stop talking about the cup" he said and handed her a new cup of coffee „Keep going. You're right on the line now. You're going to cross it. Don't stop." The atmosphere felt charged, she looked at him and didn't know if she wanted to fight the urge to kill him. Alex who was standing on the other side of the lab window saw them. When Derek turned to go, he quickly exited the room. He didn't want Derek thinking that he had been spying on him, but something was off.

* * *

 _„Derek found out" Meredith sat next to Alex who was a peds attending. He was Holding Ellis and was reading „The Little prince" to Ellis. He had helped her all through their Fellowship while George had kept her updated on Christopher._

 _„It was bound to happen some day" Alex told her. „You always knew that this day would come." In fact they had discussed the possibility a million times since Alex had run into Meredith at the beginning of his Fellowship and finding out about Ellis._

 _„I never thought it would be so soon. I thought it would be a few year of being just us." Meredith admitted. „How are you and Wilson?"_

 _„She's a resident." Alex dismissed her inquiry. He didn't want to talk about it. „What about her?"_

 _„Alex" Meredith teased him. „I know your sex face and this isn't your sex face, but you two spend an awful lot of time together." Meredith paused and put Ellis' meal into the microwave. „You have feelings for her and the fact…"_

 _„Saying the s-word in front of your daughter – really?"Alex interrupted Meredith. They exchanged a few looks until Alex finally admitted „She's different"_

 _„So what am I going to do about Derek?" Meredith sat down on the Couch and handed over Ellis' meal to her. Peas, carrots, chicken breast and rice- that kid was a health nut and into clean eating._

 _„You two are in the same city, you call him, I'll take Ellis for the night and you get to talk" Alex said and got up. „And you talk to her. She asked me why he didn't know who she was this afternoon."_

* * *

Derek looked at his phone. Addison was calling him and he wondered why. „Derek, I found her, I'm not going to tell you where she is, but I'm going to tell you something, you have two options… you can either tell her how you feel and fuck it up or you can say nothing and let it fuck you up. Once you decided what you are going to do, call me." Addison said.

„She told me that she's walking away, that I.. she signs over custody to me.." he said. „I can't push her if she's not ready."

„What?" Addison asked. She had thought that Meredith would talk about giving their relationship another Chance.

„I was going to tell her that I was ready to talk when she called…" Derek explained, but paused. If he said it out loud, it'd be real.

„And she cut all strings" Addison said

„Yeah. I should fly to Boston… I need to see her." Derek said „If I wait until she's ready it might be too late, but right now it's too early.."

„You knew she was in Boston?" This took Addison by surprise.

„Richard told me yesterday." Derek said. „It slipped"

„Why don't you fly over?" Addison wondered.

„If I go there and she's not happy to see me or she refuses to talk to me…" Derek paused „It'd be over."

* * *

 _Meredith looked around – ten minutes into their little road trip she had already seen every detail of the passenger side in Derek's car . Derek had picked her up and wanted to drive her to a fine restaurant to talk about their kids. She was sitting on the passenger seat and forced herself not to look at him. „I'm sorry. I should have told you" she said. She noticed that there were two car seats in the back of the car and wondered why._

 _„I told Christopher about you." Derek said „He wants to meet you"_

 _„Ellis wanted to meet your ever since she saw you at the Award ceremony" Meredith smiled softly. Derek stopped the car abruptly and looked at her._

 _„Mom was right, she thought she had seen you" he said „and she was right about seeing a mini version of Liz"_

 _„I guess she did" Meredith smiled and thought about Ellis for a second „She's so much like you – you wouldn't believe it." Her daughter had wavy black hair and a smile that made her heart melt._

 _„Oh, Christopher inherited your Trouble magnet." Derek chuckled. „He reminds me of you every day. I tried to move on, to go on dates, but it has always been you -and you havent been around so I figured I have to wait. What about you?"_

 _Meredith still wondered why there were two car seats in the car, but jokingly answered Derek's question „Do you have any clue how impossible it is to raise a child and to continue your residency and Fellowship.? I wouldnt have had the time even if I wanted to." „And just for the record, I never thought of it, I never considered it. What we had was enough to Keep me going"_

 _„You're babbling" he teased her and for a second it felt like she had never left Seattle._

 _„You know my babbling abilities are infinite" Meredith laughed.._

 _„Our Kids should meet." Derek said „I'm off tomorrow"_

 _„I'm not" Meredith said._

 _„Well, I'm in charge of your schedule. I think I can figure something out" Derek smirked and Meredith rolled her eyes, looked at him and quickly looked away. Was she falling for the father of her children again?_

* * *

Meredith woke up in the lab. She had been there all night. She looked at the sample in front of her. This one was different. There was a three dimensional lump of cells. She had to see where this was going, but it looked promising.

* * *

 _One night can change you for the rest of our lives. It can always change the perspective you have on your life. I've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be,_ _so it's easier to remember who I am and what I want_ _._

* * *

After buying a new set of scrub pants at the hospital shop, Meredith went home. She had just left the Hospital Building when she saw Maggie. It had been a Long day and she was due to start her next shift at 2pm. She looked like she had been crying. Meredith walked up to her and smiled „Bad breakup?" Meredith wondered „You shouldn't waste another thought on him."

„I know" Maggie said and wiped the tears from her face „No. But I guess it just wasn't meant to be. But I feel lonely at times. It didn't hurt to walk away. I imagine if he had been the right one it…"

„It would feel like you've been ripped apart from inside" Meredith added „like the only think that can keep you hanging on is not thinking about it at all, but to live one day after the next and not thinking about what comes after tomorrow. You don't feel like you can't live another minute without him."

„Yeah it just doesn't feel like it." Maggie said „I just don't feel like there's something special between us. If I was angry, I didn't have to fight my love for him to stay angry, I just stayed angry and god, I was so annoyed when he kept sleeping with his socks on. That's so annoying. And he loved to spoon, I hate spooning, I used to stay awake until he had fallen asleep and slept on the couch and the couch wasn't too comfortable to beginn with."

„In the beginning Derek used to disappear because I snored, he used earplugs later." Meredith said „I guess there is a fix to everything if you are willing to try."

„Oh, my mom is here. I have to go." Maggie said and waved to her as she closed the car door.


	35. Chapter 35

_Based on the massive response I got for the last chapter, I decided to post this chapter early! Thanks for the reviews! I really really love how involved you are! I can't believe so many of you enjoy this story so much! Thank you! I'm not going to say too much about the time jump and all the implication it might have because it would spoil the next chapter. Some of your questions will be addressed in the next chapter!_

 _I really need a beta for the next few chapters. I changed the storyline a little bit because I felt like it and I need somebody to tell me if what I have in mind makes sense. PM me if you would volunteer to do it!_

 _Enjoy the ride ;)_

* * *

 **Chapter 35**

 _To be_ a _good surgeon_ you have to _think_ like a _surgeon. Emotions_ are _messy._ Tuck them neatly away and step into a clean sterile room where the procedure is _simple. Cut, suture, and close._ But sometimes you're faced with a cut that won't heal. A cut that rips its stitches wide open. They say that practice makes _perfect._

* * *

Meredith entered the examination room at the OB's practice Maggie had recommened to her. She was overdue for her first ultrasound. During her first pregnancy she had always been with an OB at the hospital she had worked at, this time it was out of question. Nobody had noticed yet that she was pregnant, and she hoped that things would stay that way for as long as possible. „Hello Dr. Grey, isn't it?" the woman said. She was in her mid 50s and her hair was white. Maggie had told her that she had been her OB/Gyn for the longest time and that she always knew what her patients needed.

„Yeah, thanks for seeing me." Meredith smiled. „I know I should have been here a months ago, but I was so busy."

The woman nodded and asked her to take off a few things and to lay down „Just let me check." She said. Meredith was going to get her first ultrasound pictures. „The gel is going to be cold, but I guess it'll be worth it. It's a pity the dad couldn't make it." Meredith hated that comment. How did she know if it was a pity that the dad couldn't make it?

„Oh, he's not in the picture right now." Meredith said. Her phone rang and she looked at the screen. „Mer, don't hang up, let me talk to you." The person on the other end of the line said.

„Alex, I told you to stop calling me." She said and hung up. She put away her phone.

The doctor looked at her with a stern look. „I have to ask you to take things slowly, I know you are a resident and you have a busy schedule, but there are a few lesions from your previous pregnancy that might cause problems with the placenta here."

„The hospital I work at doesn't know about my condition." Meredith said. There was no way she'd be able to slow down. If she did, she was bound to start thinking and Derek was the last think she wanted on her mind. Cut, suture, close and hope for it to heal.

„Well, you better tell them soon…" the OBGYn insisted „unless you want to talk about…"

„No, I don't want an abortion, but I'll try my best not to be exhausted…" Meredith smiled.

„I'll see you in two weeks." The woman nodded „We can go over measurements and…"

„Hear the heartbeat, yeah." Meredith interrupted her.

„Your first pregnancy was unproblematic according to your chart." The doctor concluded after having a closer look on the file Meredith had supplied.

„Extreme nausea, but yeah, I was okay. Pretty much in the same place as I am in now." Meredith looked at her

„Take care of yourself." She said „And the dad seems to care, why don't you call him again?" Meredith sighed. The person who had called her wasn't the child's father and she had no intention to call him either.

* * *

Cristina was standing at the door to the residents lounge with Lexie. They both looked at Derek who had entered the hospital with perfectly done up hair and a broad smile on his shaed face and what seemed like a rediscovered god complex. After Lexie suggested that he might have moved on, Cristina disagreed. „No, he just found some weirdo who agrees that you can take out this real big tumor the way he wants to."

„There's somebody else who's crazy enough to share his assessment?" Lexie asked in shock. She had seen the scans and the approach he wanted to try seemed like a hail mary.

„Look at him, he's smiling. Why is he smiling?" Cristina wondered. The look on Derek's face was freaking her out „Gosh, this is scary, he's been running around with this‚ somebody hid my hairproducts' face for week and now he's smiling like he's on drugs."

„I don't know, but maybe he's moving on." Lexie bit her lip „I mean it's been a while since she left and nobody is so excited about tumors"

„No, no, he couldn't be." Cristina said. „Mer and he have been a natural disaster from the start."

„And he's been stuck with his research ever since he started." Lexie said.

Jackson sat down next to them „I found about a thousand ways it's not working and so has Renee". He took off his shirt and continued to talk while Lexie looked at his abs „But Dr. Springer called him. One of his fellows found a way – and I don't even know how that's possible. Did I mention that I hate neuro?"

„Why are you working with Derek?" Lexie wondered.

„Changed teaching protocols." Jackson said „ – and my grandpa. I'm sure he wanted me to work with Derek Shepherd."

Derek walked up to the group „Good morning everyone. Isn't it a beautiful day?"

Cristina looked at him „This is scary." She said and started to examine his face from both sides „Your happy face – it's scary."

„No, I received a call and Dr. Springer and one of his fellows at grew a human brain that is as developed as the brain of a nine week old fetus. It's ground breaking." He said. Cristina bid her tongue to stop herself from making a snarky comment.

„Isn't that what Dr. Collier and you were trying to do?" Lexie wondered.

„Yeah, it's what…" Jackson said, but Derek interrupted him „It's what we've been all trying to do."

* * *

 _Alex looked around. The attending lounge at looked a lot like the one at SGMW, but the surgeons around here seemed to believe in protocols. A black cardio attending had yelled at him for not wearing scrubs in there and hadn't stopped until his boss had told her that it was fine. He was holding a paper cup coffee and waiting on his boss when a brunette petite woman in walked into the room. Her hair was plaided and she was focusing on the charts she was going through while her residents waited for her outside the door._

 _„Meredith" Alex said and she looked up from her charts. She hadn't seen anyone from her old life since Callie's wedding and now Alex was standingin front of her._

 _„Oh, I see you already met our neuro fellow Dr. Burns." the head of peds told Alex while Meredith and Alex kept looking at each other like they were seeing a ghost._

 _„You are here." Alex said and Meredith looked at him. It had been two years and she had changed. Being a single mom had changed her._

 _„Yeah and I have to go, Dr. Springer wants me to check on some of his patients while he's away." She apologized and used a pen to point at the charts in front of her. Dr. Springer had gone to Seattle for the weekend._

 _„Mer, let's talk. Tell me what happened, tell me why..." Alex said, but Meredith interrupted him to buy herself some time. She had never told anyone why she had cut all strings, but she figured it was time to tell Alex. „I didn't want to be found? I'll show you, Alex. I guess you'll need more explanations afterwards, but maybe you can come to my place after you got off and we can talk tonight, but meet me at the attending's lounge at 1 pm sharp. I have to go."_

* * *

Meredith had been in the lab for two weeks now. While everyone else seemed to hit a dead end, her research was progressing. She looked at a sample through the microscope and noticed that the brain tissue that had formed discrete regions that looked like the ones that were found in early developing human brains. She was even able to see parts that were resembling cortex, retina and a few structures that produced cerebrospinal fluids. The brain as a whole proved to be impossible to recreate, but her proto brain resembled the developmental stage of a nine-week-old fetus's brain. Derek would have been amazed about the two nine week old fetus's brains she thought to herself.

She knew that Derek's group had been focusing on the development of three-dimensional brain tissue cultures in the hope of treating degenerative diseases and brain injuries more effectively. She heard Dr. Springer's voice echoing in her mind „It's important to mimic the cellular architecture of the brain." They wanted to identify biomarkers that could be used to diagnose brain injuries. Dr. Springer's group on the other hand was more focused on finding out more about how the brain worked. It was a fundamental question hoping to extend their current project into a bigger brain mapping project.

* * *

 _She had no choice but to tell Alex. Most of the residents and attendings knew that she had a daughter and Ellis being Ellis- it wouldn't have taken Alex too much time to figure out anyway. Alex had followed her through the hospital. „What are we doing at the daycare center?" Alex wondered „I thought you wanted to tell me why you left." Meredith disappeared behind the door._

 _„I want you to meet somebody." Meredith said after she had told him to wait a second. A three year old girl with wavy black hair and piercing blue eyes came out with Meredith. While Meredith had started working for the Harper Avery foundation during her last year of residency Lizzie had always been her number one priority._

 _„Oh my God, you and Derek…" Alex realized."She's beautiful" Alex looked at the child and soon realized that he had seen her before. Meredith had visited the Ambrose clinic during one of her visits in Africa for the foundation and the little girl had been following Catherine Avery's every move._

 _„Alex, I want you to meet somebody." Meredith said „That's Ellis. She…"_

 _„Looks like her dad. You don't need a DNA test for that." Alex said in surprise after he had gotten down on his knees to be at the same level as Ellis „Hello Ellis, I'm Alex."_

 _„Hello Alex" the small girl said. „I think I've seen you before" Alex got back up to have a look at Meredith._

 _„So, she's the reason you went away and burnt all the bridges, hm?" he wondered. „I thought I had seen you in Malawi, I was right." Meredith never knew why she had been hiding from Alex. He had always been the one person who would have understood._

 _„No, I only found out in Boston. But she was the reason I never came back." Meredith sighed „ Say goodbye to uncle Alex, sweetie."_

 _„Goodbye uncle Alex." The girl said in a shy voice and Meredith brought her back inside while Alex waited at the door._

 _„Christopher looks a lot like you. In fact he's like a mini Mer." Alex said after Meredith had returned._

 _„I miss him -and I miss Derek. Ellis started asking for him." Meredith said „ All the other kids in daycare have a daddy. It's hard to explain…"_

 _„Does she know who she is?" Alex wondered._

 _„She's seen pictures, I tell her stories. She'd recognize him." Meredith said „I imagine she knows him. She's seen him in the gallery once when Dr. Springer scrubbed in on a surgery with him. Beautiful tumor." It was a pity that I couldn't get my hands on it._

* * *

Derek hung up his phone. Dr. Springer had done it! Renee, Jackson and he had been stuck and Dr. Springer's fellow had managed two create two protobrains that she had been nurturing for two weeks now. It had been the news he needed, but when he hung up he didn't feel elevated. There was no rush, no excitement. He had good news and he had nobody to share it with. He saw Callie waiting for Arizona in the waiting area. He sat down next to her „My partner in Boston just had a breakthrough in our research, his fellow managed to create a three dimensional brain out of stem cells. And I'm sitting here and feel miserable because I have nobody to share it with." He said. He should tell Callie something like that. She still wasn't back on her feet and had other things to worry about.

„I'm so sorry Derek." Callie said. She felt partial responsible for his situation. Meredith had left because she had tried to help her.

„Callie, you have nothing to be sorry for." Derek said.

„Oh, Derek,.I asked her to do it. I thought I'd feel better if I hold her because to everyone else Sofia is this beautiful baby, but I don't feel like this." Callie admitted. He was the first person she had told how she felt „She feels like an alien to me and…"

„Nobody understands how you can not look at your child and feel the loss and the pain because things are not the way the were supposed to be." Derek understood why Callie couldn't be in the room with Sofia. He felt the same way about Christopher „I see her smile when he smiles. His giggles sound like hers. The longer she's away the less I'm capable of being in a room with him."

„Partly my fault, I'm so so sorry." Callie whispered.

„No this is not your fault." Derek insisted „I miss her, this long distance thing is not working. I keep telling myself that she has to be there, but I want her here and she shouldn't be here because there's no way Richard is going to give her her job back and…."

„MassGen is an excellent teaching hospital." Callie nodded. „Call her."

* * *

 _Derek had waited for this phone call for years. Ever since he had started to work on stem cells to recreate the development process of the human brain he had hoped to create something significant. Dr. Springer and he had been nominated for Harper Avery Award. Derek had received the phone call at 6.00 am Seattle time. After that he had gotten out of his bed and he had made himself a coffee._

 _He went up to Christopher's room and opened the blinds. The boy was looking back at his dad with small eyes. „Christopher, today's a very big day! Your daddy just got nominated for the most prestigous award a surgeon could be nominated for." Derek said and lifted him up from the bed. This was his victory dance „You and me are going to visit grandma and we are going to attend the award ceremony together. And you will get to know Dr. Springer and Dr. Burns who have helped me on this."_

 _„Is mommy going to be there?" The boy wondered „Big party- she has to come"._

 _„Christopher" Derek didn't want to get his son's hopes up. „I told you, she's not coming." At least he was sure she wouldn't come. She still didn't pick up her phone._

 _„Maybe she'll come back if you tell her how much I love her" the boy tried to convince him to make another try „I love her lots."_

 _Derek smiled softly. Christopher never lost the faith in people „Sometimes love isn't enough, sweetie, but I'm sure she loves you. Because if she didn't she'd be an idiot."_

 _„You don't call nobody an idiot." The boy said „Idiot is a bad word"_

* * *

Derek was surprised when Meredith picked up her phone. He had tried to call her, but she had never picked up her phone. „What do you want Derek? I told you to stop calling. I'm in the middle of something here." Meredith said. She was still at the lab and had started to analyse the neuron's reaction to electric impulses when her phone had started ringing.

„Your son wanted to her your voice. He's missing you." Derek lied. He had wanted to hear her voice.

„I miss him too." Meredith sighed and admitted „And I miss you and I don't want to miss you."

„I don't want to miss you either." Derek said and they both remained silent for a moment. There were so many things that could be said, but right at this moment it felt great not to say anything, but to know that the other one was on the other end of the line. Derek wanted to tell her that he was coming to Boston, but he was afraid that she'd run away again and Meredith wanted to tell him that she had been working on his trial, but she was afraid that Dr. Springer would find out who she was if she told Derek about her involvement.

„It was nice talking to you Dr. Shepherd" she said when she hung up. She put her phone away and smiled.

Derek was ready to leave the hospital when he walked into Rose. Rose had been his scrub nurse for a while now. She usually knew which instrument he wanted before he told her, but so far in all the hours they had worked together he had never paid a lot of attention to her.

„Care to go out for a drink?" she wondered „You've been so down these last few days. Maybe a drink is going to help you"

‚If I have a drink now, I wouldn't be able to stop', Derek thought to himself."No thank you, I have to pick up my son now and put him to bed. Maybe another day" he suggested and drove to Lexie who had picked up Christopher from daycare.

* * *

 _Meredith and Alex were standing in a hotel room. Meredith was wearing a black elegant dress and looked at Alex who was wearing a tuxedo. Ellis was wearing a silver dress and told her mom that she felt like a princess and that her daddy must be a king if they had to dress up like that to see him. Meredith smiled nervously and looked at Alex._

 _„I'm so nervous and God, I don't even know why." She said while she put on the diamond earrings Derek had bought her in what felt like a different life._

 _„Maybe because the father of your children wants to meet the disguised you he doesn't know about and you still don't have a clue how to get away without meeting him this time." Alex teased him. She had been asked to deliver the speech for Derek and Dr. Springer, but Harper Avery understood that she didn't want to. As Meredith looked out the window onto the busy streets Alex kept wondering „It's insane how you were working together on this trial for three years and you always managed to get out of meeting him every single time." Alex chuckled._

 _„The boards were a legit excuse." Meredith defended herself._

 _„The coiling of an aneurysm wasn't - even I could have fixed wasn't." Alex teased her._

 _„I promised Lizzie she'd see him. I told her he'd be there and that we'd watch him win from afar." Meredith said softly. She knew that he was going to win._

 _„I know, she told me about it all day -yesterday, the day before yesterday and the day before that. If you don't want people at the hospital gossiping about it, you should tell her not to tell anyone." Alex laughed._

 _„She's a child. She'll see him." Meredith looked at her. She was so innocent and yet so caught up in the drama both she and her dad had created months before she had been born._

 _„She'll want to meet him." Alex said._

 _„I explained to her why we couldn't." Meredith looked at Alex and imagined how Derek would react. „Not tonight anyway"_

* * *

Derek walked into Meredith's old house. Christopher was still sleeping in the nursery.„Lexie, I'll be in Boston next week. The neurosurgeon I'm working with had a break through." Derek said „Can you take him?"

„You can't go." Lexie said „and if you do, I'm not going to take him. I mean I'm a resident. I can't take him"

„Why?" Derek wondered „Because Meredith is in Boston?"

„Yeah." Lexie nodded.

„I could take Chris with me, she could be with him for a day or two" Derej said „I'll be in the lab with Dr. Springer's resident anyway – I'm sure she can take a few days off."

„She just started to work there." Lexie blarred out „Are you sure she…?"

„Do you want to come with me?" Derek wondered and they went into the kitchen to continue their discussion.

„I don't think that's a good idea." Lexie said. Meredith would feel circled and she'd run.

„Fine." Derek nodded and looked at George who was feeding Sofia „What about you, George?"

„I'm looking after Sofia. No thank you!" he said.

„Avery, you are going to Boston with me. I'm not taking no for an answer." He said and Jackson looked at him in shock. Jackson had always avoided going to Mass Gen.

„I'm not going to Boston." Jackson said and looked at Derek.

„You'll come to . with me and you'll talk to your grandfather." Derek said.

„Why can Lexie and George say no?" Jackson asked offended.

„Because they haven't persuaded their grandfather to employ my wife on the other side of the country." Derek said „and you've been in the lab as much as Renee has been. You both deserve to know what they have found out."

* * *

 _Meredith, Ellis and Alex were sitting in the gallery and looked down at the candidates and their attendants. Derek's table was full of people. She saw him and he hadn't aged a day. He sat next to his mom and and a woman she didn't know were sitting there aswell. Ellis was hyper and holding on to the railing while Meredith tried to calm her down. „Do you see him, baby?" she asked her._

 _„He's pretty" Ellis whispered and Meredith stood next to her. Carolyn Shepherd looked up to them and Meredith got back down on her seat once she had noticed it. Hopefully Carolyn hadn't recognized them._ _„Look over there, there's his table, there's your grandma and there's Christopher – your brother and there's- I don't know who she is." Alex said. Lizzie's eyes were glowing._

 _„I like her dress. It's greenish." The young girl said. „I want to meet him"_

 _„We'll meet him another day." Alex said and saw that Meredith had left the room to talk to her boss. When she came back she smiled and picked up Ellis._

 _„Darling, you saw daddy. I told you, we'd see him, but it's such a big night for him, we wouldn't want to take that awake from him. All eyes are going to be on him." She smiled and looked at her tired daughter. She had seen him and she had heard his welcome speech. She knew she'd be asleep in another ten minutes and it was convenient to take her back to the hotel now._

* * *

It had been a week since Derek had decided that he was going to fly to Boston. Cristina was looking forward to not having him around. „Thank God, Derek is away, apparently some super brainiac on the other side of the country figured out how to make brain cells connect to each other. Wonder if he'll ever come back. I'm sure they are going to offer him a job, I mean, he's good – professionally."

„No it's not good, Cristina. He's at MassGen and she doesn't know he's…and he doesn't know she is." Lexie told her „He asked me to take care of Chris while he's away, but I said I couldn't do it, I'm sure Mer would love to see him and now Dr. Collier and Jackson went with him."

"He's in Boston and Meredith doesn't know?" Cristina asked. This was a disaster waiting to happen. "We have to warn her".

„Don't mention Derek. She hung up on me when I mentioned his name on the phone two days ago." Lexie advised Cristina.

„How am I supposed to warn her that she's about to run into McDreamy without mentioning his name?" Cristina looked at her.

„I don't know, be creative. You are the twisted sisters." Lexie smiled.

„Twisted sisters?" Cristina wondered

„Hunt calls you that." Lexie said.

* * *

Meanwhile Dr. Springer and Derek were sitting in a room and went over the recent results of their studies while Dr. Collier got a tour around the hospital and Dr. Burns was in surgery. Everything Derek looked at, appeared to be promising. The brain tissue that Dr. Springer's team had created looked like real brain tissue. „So your fellow found a way to do it?" Derek asked while he looked at the microscope pictures.

„She's just a resident" Dr. Springer said.

„A resident?" Derek wondered. Jackson had been no help at all.

„A resident, but she shows amazing promise. In the six weeks she's been working here, she has proven herself to be a great addition." Dr. Springer smiled „Remember the tumor you sent over? She told me exactly what you had written down. I'm surprised a resident would go for such a bold move."

„Where is she?" Derek wondered. For some reason he really wanted to meet her.

Dr. Springer looked at his pager. „She was supposed to be here, I paged her, let me see what she's doing and just wait here for a second." He got up from his chair.

„I'm still waiting on my resident too." Derek said and smiled „But maybe the young Dr. Avery is chatting to his grandfather."

„I'll see if I can find the young Dr. Avery and Dr. Burns." Dr. Springer said and left the room. „I'm sure Dr. Sawyer and Dr. Collier will be back soon"

* * *

 _Mark looked around. All the people in the room seemed happy while he was alone. Lexie had stayed in Seattle because she felt that flying would put too much stress on their unborn child. Derek was the star of the evening and while he had promised him to have a drink with him, Mark was still on his own. This evening had been the first night where Derek had smiled. Whatever had happened between him and Meredith four years ago still impacted him deeply. He looked at a blonde in a black dress who was carrying her black haired daughter to the exit and thought that this would be the perfect picture of Meredith after the ceremony. It'd be her and Derek and their five McChildren. If it had been her leaving with him, Derek's life would have been perfect, but instead he had been talking to the Chief of Staff of John Hopkins for almost thirty minutes. Carolyn had taken Maria and Christopher to the hotel and Dr. Collier and her husband had went back to the hotel too. „I thought you had forgotten about me" Mark said when Derek finally walked up to him._

 _„Sorry Mark" Derek said and looked at the glass of scotch that Mark handed over to him „Mrk, I need changes, you live in Mer's old house now and I think she's going to walk around the corner every time I'm there. It's like a Meredith Grey ghosts haunts me wherever I'm trying to go. They offered me Chief at John Hopkins"._

 _„That's amazing." Mark said „I hope you'll finally get over her there.I won't be around to babysit Mark and Zola though."_

 _„His name is Christopher." Derek insisted."Stop using his second name"_

 _„It'll catch on." Mark teased him and raised his glass for a toast. A few people around them joined in. „To the man who has hit more walls than anyone else and still managed to break through them."_

 _„Don't you wonder what she is doing?" Derek asked. He always felt like she was close. He felt like she was there when he discussed his research with Dr. Springer, he even felt like she had been with him tonight._

 _Mark knew whom he was referring to in an instant. „Man, you have to forget about her" Mark said._

 _„I tried to, Mark." Derek reminded him „I threw out all her pictures, I never talk about her. I tried to forget about her enough to get over her, but there's no getting over her."_

 _„I never felt about Addison like this, Derek" Mark said „but if it was Lexie, I'd take her out to dinner and talk."_

* * *

Cristina was relieved when Meredith answered her phone. She had tried to call her countless time over the course of the past months, but this was the first time Meredith actually picked up her phone „Meredith, I have to talk to you. You know who…"

„Harry Potter, really?" Meredith wondered „What is Voldemort doing now? I told you to stop calling me."

„Fine, Derek…" Cristina corrected herself, but immediately realized that it had been stupid to mention his name.

„I'm not going to talk to you about him. Goodbye." Meredith said and was about to press the red button when Cristina insisted „Well, you should, you really should this time" Just when Cristina had insisted that whatever she was going to tell her was important she saw Jackson and Christopher and hang up on Cristina anyway.

Meredith kept looking at Christopher, a woman she didn't know and Jackson „Jackson, tell me, I'm…" she said and pulled him into a closet.

* * *

 _Meredith looked out the window. It was early May and she had almost finished her fellowship. In two weeks she'd be a neuro attending. She had several offers from different hospitals all over the country, but she wanted allies and Alex was her closest ally. Alex walked into the living room, he was wearing a towel around his hips and tighs and went through his wet hair with another one. Meredith was holding a letter in her hands and as she kept looking at him he figured it was for him. „Hopkins wrote you" she said „Again."_

 _„I'm sure they only want to ask me what kind of chocolate you like" Alex said. Ever since Mer had been a fellow she was a superstar. Dr. Burns had been targeted by every major hospital in the country. Her participation in Derek's and Dr. Springer's trial was a door opener. It was something he couldn't quite compete with, but he was a pediatric surgeon and that's all that mattered to him._

 _„Read it" Meredith encouraged him. The head of peds had called her to ask if he was as great as Dr. Robbins had told him and Meredith had to agree. The level of dedication Alex showed in his daily work was hard to find. „ I'm leaving Boston and I feel like it's the right thing to do." She had talked to the head of neurosurgery at John Hopkins and felt like it was the right step. Ellis and Meredith would finally get to move on and Meredith would finally get to rock the lavender scrubs at Hopkins._

 _Alex opened the letter and looked at her. „Hopkins wants me. You're not leaving this city without me" He smiled and Meredith hugged him until she noticed that he was trying to hold on to his towel. She retreated. They didn't have this type of relationship._

* * *

Meredith looked at Jackson, Renee, Allen and Christopher. Her son was waving at her, but Allen and Renee seemed to be too tied up in their conversation to notice. „What is he doing here? Tell me I'm hallucinating, Jackson. I'll never get over him if he keeps showing up." She looked at Jackson and pulled him into a supply closet.

„Do you want to get over him?" Jackson wondered and peek through the half opened door.

„Yes, no, I don't know. I don't want to miss him anymore because it just hurts so damn much, but I don't want to forget him either." She told him and looked for Christopher who was in Renee's arm „What the hell are you doing here?"

„The trial. Dr. Springer called. He said his resident Dr. Burns found something they should have a look at." Jackson said. Meredith looked at him while she hugged her son. Her eyes widened and she kept looking at him.

„Crap, don't tell me…" she said. There were a thousand words and thoughts that rushed through her head. Dr. Springer had never mentioned that Derek was planning to pay a visit.

„You are Dr. Burns?" Jackson asked. He remembered that he had asked his grandfather to let her use another name, but he had never heard the name that she was actually going to use.

„I thought you talked to your granddad about it." Meredith said „It's my mom's maiden name, I didn't want the whole ‚oh look at her, Meredith Grey, she's the child of Ellis Grey' going on again."

„I didn't know her maiden name was Burns." Jackson said. The whole situation in the supply closet seemed absurd to him. „So you saved Derek's trial?"

Dr. Springer who had looked for Meredith in the OR was drawn to the closet when he heard noise. He knocked and said „Dr. Burns, don't you want to step outside the closet? I'm sure you can talk to Dr. Avery in the conference room too. Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Collier are waiting to meet you."

Meredith looked at Jackson „I'm right there." She said and opened the door. It was too late to run.

* * *

 _Meredith walked into her apartment after Derek had dropped her off. It had been their first dinner in four years and it had felt like nothing had changed, like nothing had happened. Lizzie had fallen asleep hours ago, but Alex had stayed up to wait for Meredith. He knew that she'd want to talk. „You're back early" he said. Secretly, he was thankful that she hadn't stayed the night which would have complicated everything. „How did it go?"_

 _„He was civil and funny and sweet and" Meredith paused. She had forgotten how wonderful it was to talk to him and how light she had felt around him. „He is bringing over Christopher tomorrow."_

 _„Tell me if you need me" Alex said. Meredith nodded and tears started to flood her eyes. She walked into the kitchen and started to cry on his shoulders „Alex, this doesn't feel real, this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Can we hit the refresh button and start over? I mean, what do we do if I screw up or if he screws up? What do I do if Christopher hates me or if Zola hates me, I mean she doesn't really know me?"_

 _„Meredith, all of this hasn't happened yet. You still have time." Alex said. „Derek is in the same city as you are and you have two beautiful children and you can be happy. All you have to do is try, try to be the best mom you can be."_

* * *

Dr. Springer walked into the room, followed by Jackson. Before Meredith entered the room he started to introduce her „Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Collier, may I introduce Dr. Burns to you. We certainly owe the pleasure of this little get together to her." All of them looked at the door. Meredith breathed in and walked into the room. She'd look into Derek's eyes again. She walked into the room and looked at him.

„We do" Derek said and kept looking at her while he got up. It felt mechanical, like he had no control over his body „Nice to meet you, Dr. Burns."

Renee who was unaware of their history greeted her enthusiastically „It's a pleasure!" she said with a smile on her face „I really really want to know how you managed to do this. I've been trying..,"

„Nice to meet you Dr. Shepherd, ." Meredith said like she was controlled via remote control.

„Well, isn't it a pleasure to meet such a brilliant mind?" Derek glanced at her.

„You are talking about yourself, aren't you?" Meredith shot back. The shock had worn off quickly.

„I'm talking about you, after all it's your breakthrough." Derek said. „Why don't you show us what you did?"

„There's really not so much to tell. I just applied the knowledge I acquired and started to think outside the box, I extended my knowledge and it's not rocket science." Meredith tried to talk down her results. He was standing in front of her and he wasn't yelling. He looked at her and she looked at him and their first encounter was nothing like she had imagined it to be.

* * *

They say practice makes perfect. Theory is, the more you think like a surgeon, the more you become one. The better you get at remaining neutral, clinical. Cut, suture, close. And the harder it becomes to turn it off... to stop thinking like a surgeon. And remember what it means to think like a human being.


	36. Chapter 36

Here we go...getting you off the cliff... chapter 36. This chapter has been so much fun to write! The tension is so thick, you can cut it with a knife! Hope you love it too! Thanks everyone for reviewing! I really appreciate everyone that takes their time to do so! Thanks Kiley & Greysfann!

Patsy: Thank you! Meredith and Derek are going to talk!  
CiaraM: You are going to find out in this chapter ;)  
Susan: Hope you enjoy this chapter! Jackson is going to become more important during the 4th and 5th year of their residency, so there's a possibility he might learn to live with his family's legacy.  
Melanie: Things are not going to get less complicated for Meredith and Derek after all they are meeting in an environment where nobody knows about their past  
Darlene: Hope you enjoy the flashs!  
Dora: There are going to be a lot of answers in this chapter!

* * *

Chapter 36

 _Over the past 20 years, one of the most valuable tools a doctor has is the algorithm. Your patient's main complaint goes into a box...and then the formula helps you decide what to do next. But what happens when a problem doesn't fit into a box? Well...you are suddenly on your own, unexpectedly, with about a thousand paths to choose from._

* * *

Dr. Springer looked at Meredith who was still standing at the table. He picked up the files and got up „Now that we introduced ourselves to each other, why don't you show Dr. Shepherd the labs and the equipment first, I'm sure he'll enjoy a little tour around the hospital, I'll explain the approach to Dr. Collier". Meredith looked at him in panic.

„Sure, why don't I?" Derek wondered and got up. He was standing closer to his wife than he had in weeks. There were no words to describe his feelings. She was there, but she wasn't Meredith, she was Dr. Burns. His colleague was completely unaware of their past.

„Maybe we can persuade him to work with us here." Dr. Springer said looking at his nervous resident.

Meredith put on a nervous fake smile and nodded „Wouldn't that be a pleasure." There were only two people in the room that were able to tell that she wasn't comfortable and one was standing on the other side of the table.

„I wouldn't be the first world class surgeon who is leaving Seattle for Boston." Derek glanced at Meredith. Her mother had taken the same road -and so had she.

„How is your son, Dr. Shepherd?" Dr. Springer wondered „He turned one not too long ago, didn't he?" Derek looked at Meredith and at Christopher.

„He's fine, Dr. Collier is taking care of him." Derek smiled. Christopher was trying to get out of the assistant's reach.

„You took him with you on a business trip? Why would you do that?" Meredith said like she wasn't involved in any parental decisions „She's taking care of him? Isn't that a little bit unusual?"

„What is your wife thinking about that?" Dr. Springer wondered „Isn't he a little young for that?"

„Yeah." Meredith agreed and looked at Derek. „She might not be too happy that you dragged him on a plane and let a research fellow babysit him." Meredith smiled and looked at Derek. Jackson who was a silent observer in this situation grabbed Christopher and took him outside the room. The boy didn't need to see his parents arguing.

„She will be happy once she sees him again. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, Dr. Burns, doesn't it?" Derek glanced at her „So am I going to get this tour through the hospital now?" Meredith glanced at him like she wanted to kill him. He was well aware of what this look on her face meant, but he just smiled at her and walked out the door.

* * *

 _It was a sunny summer day, people met at the harbour for icecream or to take the ferry to the other side of the bay. Meredith had stopped her car and taken Ellis out of her car seat when Derek parked his car next to her. Zola and Christopher waved to her, Ellis waved back. It'd be the first time they met outside of daycare so Meredith was nervously awaiting the kids' encounter. Derek had told her to come to this address. He had picked one of the docks and Meredith was looking at one of the ferryboat terminals._

 _„Why a ferryboat?" she wondered. It seemed like an odd place to meet new family members._

 _„You can't run away" Derek joked._

 _„I could jump into the water and drown myself." Meredith laughed „I've done it before" She had. She had been dead for hours after Alex had pulled her out of the water._

 _„Don't." Derek insisted._

 _„You haven't changed" Meredith noted and looked at her daughter who had walked up to Derek and wanted to hold his hand „and you already won over Ellis' heart"._

 _„Hello Daddy." The young girl said._

 _„Hello Ellis." He smiled. „Christopher, Zola, this is your little sister."_

 _„Ellis, this is Christopher and this is Zola. They are your siblings." Meredith explained to Ellis._

 _They stood on the visitor deck and looked at each other. The kids were running around playing catch and Meredith and Derek stood at the railing and watched the skyline „What are we going to do now?" she wondered. It was an ubiquitous question. There were a hundred thousand paths to choose from._

 _„Well, we can ride the ferry – all day if we want." He smiled and kept looking at the skyscrapers. „Just take it slow and enjoy the view."_

 _„Do you still wear your ferryboat scrub cap?" Meredith suddenly asked. She hadn't watched any of his surgeries and she knew that it had always been his favorite._

 _„It made its return very recently." He nodded „I bought wax ear plugs – just so you know."_

 _„Der…" Meredith said. She knew why he would buy ear plugs, but she wasn't ready to let him in. For the past four weeks she had tried hard not to let anyone in. In Boston it had been Maggie, Alex and her and now it was Alex and her._

 _„Sorry, I was kidding." He smiled and backed off „What are we going to tell the kids if they start to ask questions?"_

 _„That we love them and that we are going to do our very best to make them happy." Meredith smiled and they looked at the kids for a while without talking. All the hurt and the pain they had suffered through during the past were too intense to deal with. It was best to leave it unspoken. „Why did you adopt Zola?"_

 _„She deserved a family and she's amazing." He said „I did quite the job on her shunt."_

 _„Don't flatter yourself, Derek." Meredith teased him. „Yeah, she seems great."_

 _„Some things are just meant to be." He smiled and looked at Meredith's face. The past four years had changed her, but she was still the most captivating creature on the planet to him._

* * *

Meredith, Derek, Jackson, Renee and Dr. Springer sat at a table in the cafeteria. Meredith was holding Christopher in her arms while everyone else was eating. She felt close to him again and she loved the feeling. Not only was she close to her son, but her son was also covering up her belly which she hoped Derek had paid no attention to yet. Dr. Springer seemed to be delighted to have Derek around. „I can't believe you finally agreed to meet me, Dr. Shepherd. I mean I tried to persuade you to come over for months now and you always blew me off to be with your wife and son. Seeing you came with Dr. Avery, may I ask how's your wife Dr. Shepherd?" he wondered. „Is she still interested in neurosurgery?" He was unaware of the weird looks Meredith, Jackson and Derek exchanged, but Derek put on a smile and answered his question.

„I'd say she's pretty good at the minute. After all she's doing what she always wanted to do." he sat and looked at Meredith.

„He's such a delight." Dr. Springer said when he looked at Meredith and Christopher „He's been very quiet in the arms of Dr. Burns and he barely knows her. Isn't your wife missing him if he's with you?"

„He's right where he's supposed to be and so is she." Derek said and looked at the picture in front of him.

„Dr. Burns is great with kids. Isn't she?" Dr. Springer nodded. „She's great."

„Amazing. She's very good with him. She can calm him down in a way that only his mom can." Derek said and Meredith looked at Derek. Meredith was still afraid that Derek might reveal her true identity.

„Yeah, Mer has always been great with kids." Jackson added.

„You two know each other, Dr. Avery?" Dr. Springer wondered.

„We met in college." Meredith lied „Summer school. Before we both started med school."

„I see. Why don't you smitten him with your charm and try to make Dr. Avery stay. His grandpa would be thankful." Dr. Springer suggested with a smile.

„I'm not going to work here, ever." Jackson insisted. „That's totally out of the question"

„What a pity. Looking at the rankings one might think that you were looking to get away from Seattle" Dr. Springer reminded them. Seattle Grace Mercy West wasn't the go to hospital it once had been „What about you, Dr. Shepherd?"

„I have a family and a huge research project. My best resident joined another programme recently so I had to spend a lot of time in the OR trying to teach another moron what she already knew." Derek said. It had taken weeks to teach Lexie what Meredith had already known.

„Dr. Burns has been a tremendous help in this project." Dr. Springer smiled „I bet you wish you had someone like her. No offense, Dr. Avery, but I heard you only recently took over. What is your wife doing now?"

„Hopefully she's realizing that she can't spend another waking minute without me." Derek answered with hint of sarcasm.

„You are a funny man, Dr. Shepherd. How's your research going?" Meredith interrupted him.

„Dr. Avery is still trying to familiarize himself with the material and I'd love to get another resident on board. Dr. Collier is doing fine" Derek said.

„So do you want to borrow my resident Dr. Shepherd?" Dr. Springer joked.

„I doubt she'd like the rain. Seattle is pretty cold and rainy." Derek said „Not nearly as nice as Boston"

„She has been working in Tacoma before she came here." Dr. Springer explained. He knew Meredith was used to the rain.

„Tacoma, Dr. Burns? How come I never got to know you?" Derek looked at Meredith.

„Maybe you just haven't seen me, Dr. Shepherd. And just for the record, you get used to the rain."

* * *

The cafeteria was busy around lunch time, but Arizona didn't mind. She had taken Sofia out of daycare for an hour to spend some time with her on her own. For a moment she was able to shut off the loud and busy scenery around her. „Look at you, you can turn around. Yes, little girl, you turned around." She smiled. Sofia had grown into a healthy baby. She still required constant monitoring, but she had been fine.

„You really got used to her." Richard said. Arizona looked up.„I thought you didn't want kids."

„I thought so, but then she showed up and look at her." Arizona smiled „She's cute as a button. It's different when this little kid is actually there. Why didn't you ever have kids?"

„Ì just wasn't the time. It was never the right time – or I didn't know it was the right time." He said. Afterall he had a child not many people knew about. „How's Dr. Torres?"

„Callie… hm… I don't know." Arizona mumbled. She knew that Callie was hiding in a closet everytime she heard the sound of a car horn. She looked herself in and never left the house unless she was doing something for their wedding. „One day it seems she's fine and the next… it's hard… she isn't talking about it. I know she needs to talk about it… and I… all I can do is do the groceries, clean the apartment, take care of Sofia, make things easier for her. She has to do the healing herself and she has to face her problems on her own."

„Her boards are next week." Richard said with a concerned look on his face.

„Well, she's in no condition to take them." Arizona noted and held Sofia close to her.

„And she doesn't have the hours she needs." Richard nodded.

Arizona's eyes widened „You can't fire her. She will get back."

„I wasn't going to. I was going to offer her a place for next year." Richard smiled „Fresh start – clean slate and all the time she needs."

* * *

Meredith and Derek sat in the lab like perfect strangers. Meredith was holding on to Christopher while Derek checked her samples under the microscope and went over the procedure with her. It felt like they never knew each other until Meredith finally brought herself to address a question that had been hammering on her mind since she had seen Jackson. „You haven't been surprised – not the slightest bit. Who told you? Lexie? Cristina? Jackson? Richard?" She was able to read his facial expression as when she said Richard's name out loud she knew it had been him „I can't believe that. He wasn't even allowed to tell you."

„He, nevermind…" Derek said. He didn't want to argue and somehow all the things he had wanted to tell were on his mind again. Now was the time to undo all the damage or to rip apart the wound forever. It was like this moment in surgery where you might hit the optic nerve and the patient might never be able to see again, but you didn't know if you did until he woke up.

„You are not talking to me now?" Meredith asked „You realize that we are going to be in here for a very long time, are you?"

There were too many things he wanted to say. He pushed over the microscope to her „Look at those cells, they are reconnecting." he said „That's what we've been trying to do for months now"

„But you never got so far, I know Dr. Springer told me." Meredith smiled „It's amazing, they just connect and it looks like they've never been separated in the first place. They weren't not only connecting, but they also formed little parts of the brain.

„But it's a painful process." Derek said.

„If cells can do it, can't we?" Meredith wondered.

* * *

It had been a long day in the lab, the sun had set hours ago and Meredith and Derek sat in Meredith's apartment. She had bought a couch for the living room that was otherwise empty. It never felt like home to her, but she was never at home anyway. Christopher played with a unicorn on the floor and Meredith watched Derek unpack the bag of food he had picked up. He had bought indian takeout and Meredith went through her curry with a fork because she didn't feel like eating. „Dr. Burns?" Derek looked at her questiongly. He wondered why she had chosen this name.

„It's…" Meredith said and paused. She looked and Derek and he looked into her eyes. He nodded.

„Your mom's maiden name. I know." Derek said „Why did you choose it? You could have been anyone."

„I didn't want to be Ellis' Grey's daughter for a change." Meredith said. It was quite ironic that she had chosen her mother's maiden name to avoid being associated with her.

„Are you happy?" Derek wondered. He hoped she was, but looking at the apartment he wondered whether she could be.

„At work, not when I come home to my appartment. If I go home, it feels like I'm falling apart." she said and looked into the empty living room.

„Christopher misses you. You can have him tonight." Derek smiled. „He's laying awake at night and it's hard to get him to sleep, he has no appetite and he's difficult when people try to interact with him."

„Derek, I don't want to fight anymore." she said and looked at him.

„I don't either" he said and looked at her with a smile.

„I don't want you gone. I know, I'm the one that left" she paused „but I mean, this isn't us, this isn't how we end, is it?"

„I don't want it to. I'm trying." he smiled.

„I'm trying too. I can come back." Meredith suggested „We can go back."

„Meredith, no, no, stay, but in a good way, stay." He smiled „You do what you have to do, we can do this, people do this"

„Yeah, people do this." She said and looked at his slight curls. „So I'll stay and do what I have to do and so do you. We'll figure this out."

„We can do this" he said and she repeated. „We can do this" Their heads moved closer together until their lips touched. When Derek's hand moved closer to her stomach Meredith pulled back. They looked at each other.

„I'll go now." He stuttered and grabbed his coat and she nodded „We'll talk tomorrow. Take care of yourself."

* * *

 _Derek had just tucked Christopher and Zola in when he dialed his best friend's number. Mark was in Seattle waiting for his first son to be born. In an ironic turn of fate he had been a grandpa before he had fathered a son. Derek looked at the phone and noticed that Mark had picked up „Meredith and I rode the ferryboat together." He said._

 _„Is this some sort of weird sex metaphor?" Mark smirked._

 _„No, Mark, we rode the ferryboat." Derek said „Meredith, the kids and I – Ellis got to know their 's a first step"_

 _„What did she say about the past four years?" Mark wondered._

 _„Not much." Derek answered truthfully. So far he hadn't heard anything about it._

 _„She's been gone for four years and hid your daughter from you." Mark reminded his friend „She should have told you something."_

 _„She didn't need to… I just knew." Derek said „I looked into her eyes and I knew"_

 _„Help, don't tell me we are back to this again." Mark sighed._

 _„Back to what?"_

 _„Back to, we might have a chance to go back to being a perfect little family." Mark used a sweet voice to tease him._

 _„You and Lexie have it" Derek insisted. If anything had been complicated it was Mark's and Lexie's love story._

 _„Derek, you have to tell her how you felt, you can't go to being happy without talking about the last four years." Mark insisted „You've been in therapy – Christ, you even brought your therapist to your award ceremony. Even though I can't blame you – that chick was hot."_

 _„I didn't invite her because she's hot, I invited her for getting me where I am now." he said firmly „I'm not angry at Meredith anymore."_

* * *

It was the next morning when Mer was standing next to a few other 3rd year residents. Derek and Jackson walked up to her. They had been waiting for their weekly assignments from Allen Sawyer and wondered what was taking him so long. Some of the girls looked up and smiled at Jackson.

Allen approached the group from behind. He leaned over to hear and whispered „How's the girl that looks so good naked on my couch?" into her ear. Derek who had heard every word looked at her.

„What?" She looked at Allen. "I'm fine, and I.."

„That's her problem" Derek mumbled. „She's always fine."

„What's the matter with him?" Allen whispered into Meredith's ear playfully.

„Dr. Derek Shepherd." Meredith bit her lips „May I introduce Dr. Allen Sawyer to you?"

„Excuse me, but I need to catch some air, so better make it quick."

„Can we talk, Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith wondered.

„My pleasure, Dr. Shepherd." Allen extended his hand to Derek „I read a lot of your work."

„Pleasure to meet you." Derek said in an aggressive matter.

„What's the story between you and Shepherd?" Allen wondered. „Why does it feel like he wants to rip my head off."

„He's the reason I came here" Meredith said. „and you shouldn't feel safe around me either!"

„He made a move on you?" he smirked.

„You could say that" Meredith said.

„I thought he was married" Allen said „He published an article with his wife a while ago."

„was is the right word." Derek interrupted him „Apparently I had to find out that my wife moved on. Why don't you gossip a little less and show me around a little more. I'm sure Dr. Burns has patients to push around the hospital."

„You better keep your hands off her, after all she enjoys staying the night." Allen smirked. Meredith was stunned. „Allen, seriously." she mumbled and her eyes were wide open.

„You can't be serious, Meredith." Derek told her.

„Derek. That's not how it happened." Meredith insisted, but Derek was blinded by his jealousy.

„I knew you were sleeping around." he yelled.

„I didn't and besides it's none of your business." she said. He had left her.

„It is -until you signed those god damn papers." Derek yelled and walked away leaving Allen and Meredith on their own.

„What have you been thinking?" Meredith yelled at Allen. If she it had been legal, she would have ripped his head off his body.

„I tried to be funny." he shrugged.

„Well, you weren't." Meredith yelled „Leave me alone! The next time you cross that line, I'll rip off your head"

He handed over a pen to her „Here, you need something to draw that line." She took the pen and threw it back at him before she left.

* * *

Meredith followed Derek into the attrium. She knew that he'd be mad. The evening before they had decided to be civil around each other and now Derek had every reason to mistrust her. „You are sleeping around again, it's what Mark is doing, you two are alike" he yelled at her. „You can go back to your boyfriend!"

„Oh, we are alike. You like both of us. Liked both of us. He's your best friend. I haven't been, I haven't slept with him, we haven't been, I was drinking and things got a little out of hand" Meredith explained. She couldn't mention that she had fainted because of her pregnancy because Derek didn't know she was pregnant „Nothing happened. But I don't think me sleeping or not sleeping with somebody is the real issue here. We have to sort out a few things, let's talk about it."

„I can't and Meredith, after hearing this I don't know if I want to, my flight leaving in this afternoon and right now I'm too mad at you to talk, do me the favor, just sign the papers, and we'll call it quits. It's best for everyone…"

„Derek, look at me, I did not sleep with him. Did we not communicate last night? I missed you and missing you is exhausting. I don't want to sign the papers." Meredith said „I thought I could be like her, but I can't. I can't because she was miserable and lonely. I'll fly down to Seattle on the weekend but I won't come back for long, but let's talk then. I want to be with you, I want to become a surgeon and I can't do that in Seattle, but we've been married for 800 days now. 800 days. That's not something you just throw away."

„That's what you did when you left and took a plane to the other side of the country." Derek insisted „You do what you have to, it's better for our son not to be around a liar and a cheater."

„Are you saying I'm a liar and a cheater? I did not cheat." Meredith yelled „You are impossible."

„That's what I'm saying. You screwed up and you lied." Derek said. „You jepardized your career and our family."

„I haven't screwed up since I got here, Derek, I've been perfect ever since" Meredith said with teary eyes „I haven't done anything. Why can't you forgive me? You don't know the story, you don't know anything, you don't get to call me a whore. I didn't do anything. I went to Boston because I was fired. I lied to the social worker, that's all I did."

* * *

 _Alex was waiting for Meredith with a glass of wine in the kitchen. Ellis had fallen asleep on the way back to the house „How did it go?" he wondered._

 _„We rode the ferryboat" Meredith smiled happily. They had been on a ferryboat for almost four hours._

 _„Is this code for sex?" Alex teased her._

 _„Alex, the kids were around" Meredith reminded him „and I'm celibate." There hadn't been anyone since she had left Seattle._

 _„Wait, Derek has been around for a week" Alex said and they both exchanged a look. So far it had been work and the kids and barely any interaction on a personal level except for the dinner until today._

 _„And we haven't had sex." Meredith said „He's my boss"._

 _„He has always been your boss." Alex chuckled. This had never stopped Meredith._

 _„Not when we met." She suggested „He was just a guy in a bar back then."_

 _They sat down and looked at the pictures Meredith had taken. Christopher had gotten so big. It was hard to remember how small he had been once. „I keep wondering if Christopher ever got the birthday or Christmas cards I sent." She admitted. She had been afraid to ask him._

 _„Lexie never mentioned them. And he didn't recognize you" Alex said. That was his answer._

 _„I never sent photos." Meredith said._

 _„Have you ever wondered how you'd feel like if he had moved on and you walked into him here?" Alex wondered. Derek was an attractive men and he knew that he had been on dates._

 _„I'd still be Christopher's mom. Nobody can take that away from me." Meredith said „We'll always be connected through our kids. Besides, I was the one that left. He'd have had every right to move on. I'd understand."_

 _„I call bullshit." Alex said._

 _„He asked me what I've been up to those last four years, if there was anybody." Meredith smiled softly and looked at Alex. He knew every of her stories and sometimes it felt like they were an old married couple. They had all the emotional proximity and no sex._

 _„And what did you say?" Alex wondered._

 _„That it's been the three of us, that I've been working my ass off on a trial and that I am the best neuro atteding he could wish for." Meredith said._

 _„You said the three of us." Alex looked at her._

 _„And I told him that you've been there as a friend ever since the start of our fellowships. Ellis calls you uncle Alex, not daddy if that's any indication." Meredith said. She knew Derek knew that there would never be more than friendship between Alex and her even though he had become her person throughout the past two years. „So how's that resident you insist you don't have sex with? I saw her sneaking out this morning and I heard her all night."_

* * *

Derek and Renee were sitting in the lab going over Dr. Springer's and Meredith's findings again, but Derek was absent minded. He kept looking at the miniature brain Meredith had nurtured throughout the past weeks. „I need something to make me feel better. Do you remember this wall we talked about? I'm hitting it right now" he said „I really want to break through but I guess I just keep myself from doing it. Even though I know it's the right thing to do."

Renee overstepped and misunderstood what Derek tried to tell her, her lips touched his and for a moment his tongue touched hers. For a second it felt good, but then the realisation kicked in that those weren't Meredith's lips.

„I can't do this." Derek shrugged after a few seconds. She had taken him by surprise and it took him a moment to realize that her lips were touching his and that his mouth had opened.

„I'm sorry. Tell me that his is all in my head that there isn't something between us." She stammered while Meredith peaked at them through the blinds unable to hear what they were talking about. She saw that Meredith took his hand."I know there is"

„I love my wife. I'm married. I don't want anything other than what I had with he. I have to go, right now I have to go."

Derek ran out of the lab and didn't even notice that Meredith was standing in the vestibule. He didn't know she had seen him. He didn't know that she had not heard his words either.

* * *

Derek's head was spinning. He needed to talk. Until Renee's lips had touched him he had been sure that it was over, but now a hundred thousand thoughts were flying through his head. He needed to talk to someone and when Mark finally picked up his phone he blarred out „She slept with a guy from the hospital . It's the guy who answered her phone weeks ago. She insists she hasn't slept with him and I don't know what to think."

„I know one thing about Meredith Grey, she never sleeps with colleagues and I tried – I really tried. „ Mark tried to persuade him „Somehow her mommy issues kept her from doing it. She slept with a lot of inappropiate people, but coworkers are not her thing. It's my thing."

„The Meredith you thought you knew didn't sleep with anyone." Derek tried to point out. He didn't know if Dr. Burns was still the woman he had once fallen in love with.

„Derek, Meredith didn't sleep with him." Mark said „I can guarantee that she didn't. I know her"

„How do you know?" Derek wondered.

Mark smiled. He had had his fair share of experience with all kinds of women„I tried to get into her pants and she has Christopher, she…"

„He was with me, Mark." Derek said, but he didn't realize that Mark hadn't been talking about the very moment, but about the mere fact that Christopher was her son.

„It doesn't matter. Lexie told me that she thought there was still a chance." Mark said „I mean, look at the two of you"

„I thought, well until her chief resident told me that she had spent the night naked on his couch…" Derek spat out „Why have you been talking to Lexie? I… I didn't know she was here. I mean I knew she was in Boston, but I didn't know she was the one that saved my trial"

„It wasn't over, it still isn't over, Derek." Mark said.

„Renee kissed me" Derek admitted „My wife and my assistant kissed me within 24 hours."

„Who is Renee?" Mark wondered.

„My assistant." Derek said. „The assistant Richard hired."

„Good for you" Mark smirked „Look, Derek, you wouldn't have kept up that charade in the canteen if you had thought that it was over."

„It's over. There's too much water under …" Deek insisted „whatever. I want to move on, but…" Mark interrupted him „You can't. And when your assistant kissed you Meredith was all you thought about" This feeling was all to familiar for him.

„I can't get over her. Maybe it's stupid but I don't want to forget us, I don't want to forget her, I don't want to forget what we had. I want what we had, I want to be with her." Derek said „I want to be happy again and not think about her when I wake up."

„There's your answer, you are still into her, Derek and if you don't want to be, there's a quick way to get over her and it's called sex." He smiled even though sex wasn't working for him like it use to either.

„I'm not sleeping around like you are." Derek said.

„But you are kissing your assistant. That's a start" Mark smirked and hung up.

* * *

 _„Nothing changed Derek, we still have the same problems like we did in Seattle even though now we arent even in a relationship! You don't respect my opinion!" she looked at Derek who was washing his hands after surgery. He had watched her surgery in the gallery and when she had chosen what he thought was the wrong clip he had stopped her and taken over._

 _He turned around and looked at her. „Maybe I'd respect you if you hadn't run away from your problems. How do I know you stick around long enough to get through them?" Derek yelled at Meredith „You are not experienced enough in that OR. You might have clipped ten or twenty aneurysm, but I clipped a hundred."_

 _„I'm always going to be that intern to you." Meredith noted. „and you are always going to be that hot shot neuro surgeon."_

 _„That's how you see yourself, Meredith!" Derek told her. But he realized she was right. Had she been any other attending he wouldn't have acted like this._

 _„Fine! Tell me why you stole my patient!" Meredith told her „Tell me why you walked into that OR and told me to leave!_

 _„Because you were going to use the wrong clip." Derek muttered. She had grown a lot more confident throughout the past four years._

 _„I know what I'm doing Derek! I've had an excellent mentor. He won a Harper Avery with you. I knew which clip to choose. You were out of line and unreasonable and if this ever happens again I'm going to file a complaint." She looked at him. „In my last year of residency I ran Dr. Springer's service because he was so involved with your trial."_

 _„You are going to file a complaint. On grounds of what?" Derek was amused. „I'm your boss and you didn't listen."_

 _„I didn't listen because I didn't need to listen to you." Meredith stated calmly. „I knew what I was doing. You just couldn't trust me!" That was it! He didn't trust her._

 _„Why would I trust you Meredith? Why should I ever trust you?" he asked „When things got hard you ran away, you left your son, you left me and you never bothered to tell me I had a daughter. I have no reason to trust you!"_

* * *

Jackson and Meredith sat on a set of stairs outside the hospitals „I don't get how you do it – working with him." He admitted.

„He's not my grandfather. It's not my legacy." She said „My legacy is screwing things up in Seattle and moving to Boston with a baby the father has no clue about."

He looked at her „You are?"

„Yes. And mom was too." Meredith added.

„Webbers?"

Meredith nodded.

„I figured." He sighed „What are you going to do?"

„I don't know Jackson, I honestly don't know. How is everyone?"

„Everything changed. Alex is planning to go to Africa, April is gone and Cristina, she might not admit it, but she misses you and I'm getting a hundred thousand phone calls and my grandpa keeps pushing me to come here." Jackson sighed „What about you and Derek?"

Meredith smiled and giggled. „He kissed his assistant and I… I can't decide if I want to have his babies or punch him in the face. He kissed his research assistant and he gave me crap about cheating when I didn't even touch nobody. I just don't know anymore. When it comes to him I don't know." They hugged and Jackson went back to the hotel he, Derek and Renee had been staying at. Her old life was going to leave soon, but it had torn open old wounds.

* * *

Arizona and George were standing in the OR together. Arizona had requested him because she needed to find a capable replacement for the three months Alex would stay in Africa and she needed to talk about Callie with somebody. George had been her friend in need quite a few times now. He had taken Sofia without a word of complaint whenever she had called him.

„Meredith is coming over. Maybe Callie is going to be better once she bought a wedding dress." She said as she looked up from the child's open abdomen.

„Retail isn't therapy and Meredith isn't a therapist either." George said „She's coming back?" He wondered how she was doing. She had told him to stop calling a few times now.

„She told Callie she was." Arizona said „She better not be lying because Callie is looking forward to this and at the minute Callie doesn't have an awful lot to look forward to." George sensed Arizona's aggressivity because she pulled the retractor out more quickly than usually.

„Arizona, Callie has everything to look forward to." George said remembering how his mother felt at the minute. She was in pain every minute of the day after her chemo and leucocyte treatment „Callie is young and alive and those scars are going to heal."

„I found her in a closet George, she's been hiding in a freaking supply closet because that's the only place she feels safe at." Arizona said „I can't make her feel safe and it's my job."

„Your job is to be there and you are there." George smiled.

* * *

Meredith sat in the lab trying to forget about Derek and Christopher again. He had left to go back to the hotel and he'd be gone in the afternoon. „You've been good with Dr. Shepherd's son." A voice from afar said. It was Dr. Springer who had just entered the room.

‚No, I haven't.' Meredith thought to herself. She smiled and looked at the neurosurgeon. „Sir, I have to tell you something. I've been lying enough and it has to stop."

„What are you saying Dr. Burns?" he was puzzled.

„First of all, my name is not Burns. My mom's maiden name was Burns, but my name is Meredith Grey and Dr. Shepherd, he's my husband and Christopher is my son." She said and he looked at her like she was telling a lie. „That's why I was so good with him. I was working at Seattle Grace Mercy West before I came here, but given my mother's name Jackson's grand father agreed to it. A mid year transfer brings enough attention as it is."

„You were involved in the glioma trial?" he asked and she was more than surprised that this was the most pressing question he had after she had confessed her true identity to him.

„Yes." She nodded. It had been one of their biggest successes.

„Wow. I assume Dr. Avery knows, after all he signed all your transfer papers. Why did you leave Seattle?" He wondered.

„It's a long story. I got fired, but that's not the story." Meredith said „It's a very long story, but at the end there's…"

„There are always ways to reconnect, Dr. Grey." He smiled. „We just got brain cells to reconnect in a dish, we should be able to reconnect to the people closest to us."

„Not if both people think they are right. I think it's too late." Meredith said. „I missed my window of opportunity."

„Things are not always as they seem, Dr. Grey. Sometimes hoofbeats are zebras and sometimes we don't see things for the way they are. Even salt looks like sugar. You have a few things to sort out. You should go back to Seattle for the weekend and figure things out for your sake. Do you want me to keep calling you Dr. Burns?"

She smiled and nodded „For now. Thank you." She wondered if it would feel as good to tell the truth to Maggie.

* * *

Meredith looked at Jackson's grandfather. He had called her to his office after Derek and his congregation had left the hospital. „You cannot accept reality just because it seems convenient to walk away from the person you love." He said „Ellis chose to be lonely if that's what you are worried about. I know you two never had the best relationship but you were all she had. She talked about you a lot in surgery when she knew you wouldn't hear it."

„She never made me feel like I was good enough. I felt like a constant failure. I'm tired of feeling like I let everyone down." Meredith said.

„Ellis has been a lot of things, but compassionate wasn't one of them. When she came here I knew she was pregnant." He admitted „I told her that we could work out something, but she insisted in only keeping you. It was her choice."

„You knew about it all those years?" Meredith wondered. Ellis had never told anybody as far as she was aware.

„Yes." He said. „I never knew who the dad was"

„Wow, she was very secretive about it." Meredith smiled. „I only found out about the adoption after she died. I didn't remember a single thing about it."

„It has been the most difficult decision of her life." He said „It changed her. She never loved herself after that because she never felt complete."

„Unfinished." Meredith nodded „It's hard to comprehend because she might have had this whole other life."

„You would have had a whole other life, but Ellis chose to live the life she did." He said „But you get to choose the life you live now."

„Did she hesitate?" Meredith wondered.

„Ellis knew what she was doing, but she also knew that everything has a price." He nodded „How's your son?"

„He grew up so much since I left – and it hurts. I'd love to have him near me." Meredith smiled.

„Dr. Shepherd would be an excellent hire. Dr. Springer has been looking to step back from surgery for a while to focus on his research." He noted.

„You don't have to hire anyone for me." Meredith smiled.

„I'm not going to hire him for you. I wouldn't hire anyone for anybody. All I'm saying is that there's a way" he insisted „But for your sake, you better fly to Seattle and fix things. You have a lot to discuss and you have a chance to prove that you are nothing like your mother. You are brave enough to return and make things right."

„How do I know it's the right time?" Meredith wanted to know.

„Intuition!"

* * *

 _„You paged me? Want to check if I killed any patients?" Meredith asked when she walked into Derek's office „I didn't." She looked around and saw a picture of them. It was a picture of her and him with Christopher on the day he had been born._

 _„I'm sorry." Derek said._

 _„Well, you better be." Meredith said and sat down on the chair in front of Derek's table._

 _„I'm here." He said and got up. He walked over to her and leaned against his table „Four years ago I never bothered to show up, but now I do because…"_

 _„You are willing to work on us?" Meredith wondered and couldn't believe the hypocrisy of this statement. He had been the one that had refused to talk to her for the better of three weeks before she had left and he had been the one that was completely out of line in the OR earlier._

 _„Yeah, if we want to be in our kids lives we have to learn how to be civil around each other." He said._

 _„Well, it might start by not kicking me out of my own OR." She bit back „I'm mad! You made me look like an incompetent."_

 _„I told you, Mer. I'm sorry". He said._

 _„I don't want you to say the words, I want you to mean them" she said. „It would have worked just fine. When I asked you how you choose the right clip during my 2nd year of residency you told me to trust my intuition, that I'd just look at the situation in front of me and I'd know."_

 _„I was out of line. I'm sorry". He said._

 _„Have you ever wanted where we would be if the past four years hadn't happened like this? I mean… you won a Harper Avery and I… I'm a hot shot neuro attending at one of the best hospitals in this country. We made it pretty far in our careers." Meredith asked him „We haven't seen each other in four years and here we are after a week -fighting and yelling at each other"_

 _„I used to… but not anymore. The past is the past. There's nothing we can do about it." Derek said. They both had made mistakes._

 _„Do you think we'd be together?" she wondered._

 _„I'm convinced we would." He nodded with a smile._

 _„Why?" she looked at him and looked at the happy family picture of him, Christopher and Zola, Lexie and Mark._

 _„Because - remember when we had our first huge fight- I told you that I felt like I was drowning and you were like coming up from fresh air." He paused for a second „I still feel that way"._

 _Meredith looked at him „Don't say those words unless you mean them because I'm inclined to believe them."_

 _„I'm not sure if we'll make it, but I'll give it my best shot, Meredith." He said and his hands touched her neck, his lips touched hers. „I can tell you why I want to be with you, why I'm still in love with you, but you better take some time, because I could tell you all night"_

 _They kissed. For the first time in four years their lips touched and it felt like a firework._

* * *

Meredith sat on her bed and cried. Nothing was like she had imagined it to be. She wasn't an attending, their trial was still in its very beginning and they hadn't kissed. She didn't remember the last time they had and she kept looking at the picture of Christopher on her nightstand. Tears started to stream down her face and her whole body was in pain. Derek knew where she was, but he didn't care. He had left. One night he had given them a new chance and at the next he had kissed another woman.

She looked at her belly and wondered what this baby was going to think about his or her daddy. She thought of Derek and suddenly she felt like she was ready to fall apart. „Maggie, I forgot him for a second and then he show's up here and…" Meredith cried and what she said was barely recognizable to Maggie.

„It's going to be fine, Meredith" Maggie encouraged her „You are strong and you can do this"

„I never wanted to be like her, but now I am" Meredith continued. „I left all my friends and my family and I'm not scared that I'm not myself here and I'm scared that I am. I'm …"

„Mer, are you okay?" Maggie wondered.

„Yeah" Meredith sniffered under her tears. Her whole body hurt. „It just feels so wrong, everything feels so wrong. I have to call him"

„Derek" Meredith said with a teary voice once he had picked up the phone.

„Meredith" a relieved Derek said. He had thought that she wouldn't ever want to talk to him after she had seem him with Renee.

„Derek, I have to talk to you, so please don't hang up. I saw you and I know that I don't but…I'm…" Meredith said, but Derek who was boarding his flight interrupted her „Meredith I can't hear you, the signal…" he said before he lost the signal. She was in pain and she was on her own.

* * *

 _So, what do you do? How do you decide when you're left in the dark? How do you make sure you are not making the worst mistake in somebody's life? You close your eyes...you block out everyone and everything around you, and pray the voice inside you is right. Because once you decided...you can't ever go back._

* * *

Derek never bothered to call Meredith again. After all it was the middle of the night in New York and he assumed that she slept. He didn't know about the pregnancy and he didn't know what she had wanted to tell him. He had to think so he went into the bar across the street after dropping off Christopher at Lexie's place. Just after he sat down a woman walked in and sat down next to her.

„So are you here often?" Rose asked.

„Only when I'm trying to Chat up women." Derek said with a smile on his face „No, I'm kidding. It's weird, we've been in the OR for more than 300 hours and I never looked at you…"

„Yeah, you looked at your wife, you looked at the patients and everyone else is looking at you. You are very pretty to look at." She joked.

„You don't have to compliment me." Derek said and looked at his glass of scotch.

„So your son, does he look like you?" she wondered.

„No, not at all, he has blonde hair and green eyes and her smile." Derek said absently minded. He looked at his phone and wondered if she'd call again. „I… sorry, I shouldn't."

„Are you emotionally available?" She wondered „You are looking at you phone and I'm only asking because you don't seem emotionally available and you asked me out before you went to Boston and something changed and I don't typically go out with men who are not over their ex."

„I am." Derek said „At least I'm trying."

„Why Seattle? You're from New York." She wondered „It's always raining"

„I have a Thing for ferryboats." He smiled.

„The scrub cap is it?" she wondered „So what's the Story with it, you haven't been wearing it in a while."

„And you are wearing your Engagement ring around your neck." He pointed out.

„Well, I wore it around my finger when I was engaged." She replied with a sad nod.

„I'm sorry."

„Oh, you don't have to be, it was never going to work out anyway." Rose said. „It wasn't meant to be"


	37. Chapter 37

_Guest: Rose is going to redeem herself (sort of)…_

 _Patsy: Ready to rumble? Thanks for the review!_

 _Melanie: Thanks! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Some things are going to be a lot clearer afterwards._

 _Clarice: Derek is going to grow a bit (but after reading your review I feel sort of bad about what's going to happen in this chapter, I really hope you aren't mad)._

 _Guest2: Meredith has a lot to deal with!_

 _Susan: You'll find out ;) Thanks for the review!_

 _Darlene: Thanks for the review! Those papers are going to play a vital role in this chapter._

 _Dora: You'll find out ;) I don't think Rose can break up MerDer._

 _Shelley: thanks!_

 _Margaret: Yeah, grad school has been a rather gruesome experience for me – never felt closer to a mental breakdown than during my first semester of grad school. Things get better! Hope this story lightens up your day!_

 _Cindy Lou: Thanks for the review!_

* * *

 **Chapter 3** **7**

 _My least favourite phrase in the human language is „I'm sorry". Nine out of ten times when a person says they are sorry, they're only sorry they got caught and want you to forgive them for something you're still pissed about. People generally think of forgiveness as the flip side of contrition, the obligatory response to an apology. It's not. Forgiveness is to answer the call of our better angels and bear our wounds as the cost of doing business. It's the rarest of things. Once we are able to forgive we are able to heal. But how do you know if you re ready?_

* * *

Two weeks after Derek had left Meredith was back in Seattle. Everything had changed and everything was different. Cristina was the only one who knew that Meredith was back. She had called her on Thursday night and had said that she was coming over to sort a few things out. The two women sat in the Emerald Bar and talked over tequila shots and beers.

„We hurt each other and I lost a baby" Meredith said after she had downed three shots in a row. „A perfect little baby"

„You'll get Zola back" Cristina tried to encourage her. The case was still pending. The judge hadn't decided on a hearing date, social services didn't have a clue what was going on.

„I'm not talking about Zola." Meredith said and leaned over to Cristina after taking a shot „I was pregnant."

„It was McDreamy's, right?" Cristina wondered.

„Of course, it was." Meredith said and threw away her shot glass „I haven't slept with anybody since we got married. I'm not the one that is running around kissing research assistants."

„Does he know?" Cristina hadn't talked to him since he was back. She knew that he had started to meet his scrub nurse, but he had been in an awful mood all week.

„No, and I don't know how to tell him because I don't know how to talk to him without wanting to punch him." Meredith said and watched Derek and Rose coming into the bar „Losing one child has been bad enough and now he's there talking to this … doe-eyed little thing… Rose, she's his scrub nurse."

„You know her?" Cristina was surprised. She had only learned her name through the normal hospital gossip.

„I stood next to her during close to fifty surgeries." Meredith explained. One thing her mother had told her was never to underestimate the importance of a good scrub nurse and professionally Rose was a good scrub Nurse, privately Meredith felt an Impulse to punch her even harder than she wanted to punch her estranged husband. „I know her name. He's moving on."

„That's bullshit. Mer." Cristina said.

„No, just look at him, something, there's something and I want to talk to him, no I need to talk to him, there's something we have to talk about." Meredith said and Cristina realized just how intoxicated Meredith was.

„The divorce?" Cristina wondered as she held her back.

„No, not the divorce." Meredith said and looked at her. „Maybe there's still a chance if we talk, but if there isn't… there isn't. I'm not able to forgive him."

„Don't tell me your are doing that desperate charade called couple's counseling." Cristina said.

„No, but I was pregnant." Meredith said „and he deserves to know, but he's been acting like a jackass and I'm afraid to talk to him"

„You exercised your legal right…" Cristina said „he doesn't has to know"

„No, Cristina I didn't." Meredith said „I lost it the day he came over to discuss the progress I had made on his trial. One minute I was fine and the next moment there was no heart beat and we were fighting. I was alone when the removed every last bit of the pregnancy from the uterus. He wasn't there and I don't know if I can forgive him for not being there."

„He doesn't know?" Cristina wondered. At twelve weeks he must have noticed something.

„He doesn't. I felt so alone and all I could think of was how badly I wanted him to be there and that I didn't ever want to feel that way again. What we had, no what we have is worth fighting for."

„Let's go home Mer, you are drunk and tomorrow is another day."

* * *

 _It was the morning after Derek had left when Meredith waited in her OBGYN's practice for her second ultrasound. „Dr. Grey, glad to have you back. How have you been feeling?"_

 _„I'm fine." She said even though she wasn't. The OBGYN applied the gel and started to look at the monitor. In a few seconds she'd hear the baby's heartbeat. It had been one of her favorite moments during her first pregnancy. She looked from one side and from the other and her face looked increasingly more concerned._

 _„There's no heartbeat." Meredith said. She had been waiting too long._

 _„This isn't unusal." the OBGYN said and tried a few other positions._

 _„But, what's the matter?" Meredith looked at her. She knew what this meant. „Why are you looking at the measurements? There's no heartbeat and it hasn't grown the way it's supposed to. I miscarried, didn't I?"_

 _The woman looked at her and nodded „It looks that way, Dr. are going to do an HCG test and another ultrasound to confirm it, but I'm afraid it looks like it"_

 _Meredith kept starring at the monitor. This had been her baby, her joy, her mini copy of Derek, her reason to go on, but now Derek was gone and the baby was dead. She was in Boston and he was in Seattle. But after the first shock had worn off she felt relieved and she hated herself for it. „I'm very sorry Dr. Grey. Do you want me to call somebody?" the OBGYN interrupted her thoughts. She looked up and nodded._

* * *

When Meredith walked into the hospital the next day she saw that Derek was talking to Rose at coffee cart. She looked at them, but didn't hear a word. „Rose, no, I don't want to meet tonight. You can complain all you want, but I don't want to" he said.

Rose took her cup and poured its contents over his scrub top and lab coat. Meredith couldn't help herself but smile as she walked away. She wanted to visit George and she hadn't seen Lexie since she had left. She looked at the door to the surgical wing. This had been her arena, now she was just a visitor. She checked if somebody was in the resident locker room, but it was empty. When she turned around, she saw her sister. „Mer? You are back?" Lexie hugged her overly enthusiastically. Meredith looked at her and didn't quite recprocicate the hug. She wasn't ready to feel joy or happiness the way she would have been able to two weeks ago.

„I'm sorting out a few things" Meredith nodded. „I'll be back in Boston on Monday." She wasn't here to stay. She wanted to meet Derek, talk to the lawyer and she wanted to fight to have a part in Christopher's life.

„Do you know what you are going to do?" Lexie wondered. She hadn't talked to her sister since Meredith had left.

„What do you mean?" Meredith wondered. There were a million things she had to deal with and she was clueless about where to start. Her feelings would be a good starting point, but in order to address those, she'd have to talk about a lot of things she wasn't yet able to talk about. She wasn't even sure if she wanted everybody to know.

„Derek, Christopher, your family, your marriage, the house you built in the woods." Lexie said „He doesn't admit it, he missed you so much, he's been unbearable at work, he didn't shave and he drank a lot and then he started obsessing over his research."

„Research or making out with that dooey eyed research assistant or that nurse?" Meredith spat out. Lexie looked shocked. She obviously had not heard of what happened between Derek and Renee in Boston.

„Renee left." Lexie said „She quit after they came back from Boston. Which nurse?" She had been too busy to notice anything.

„A nurse." Meredith said „He invited her for coffee this morning and he kissed his research assistant when he was in Boston. He's getting around."

„Jackass." Lexie said.

„Yeah, I thought we had time to fix this, I came home to fix this, to work on us, but apparently it's too late." Meredith said „I have to go, Lex. We'll talk. Callie's waiting for me."

* * *

 _It had been a day since the miscarriage had been detected. The HCG hormone test had confirmed the diagnosis and Meredith was in her OBGYN's practice again. It'd be a small procedure. „A local anasthes_ _ia is fine. I have to work tomorrow." She replied after the doctor had asked her if she was sure about this. She didn't want to take two days off for an ordinary D &C. Her doctor would go in and removed all the small pieces of her placenta that were still in there. The last pieces of a life that was never meant to happen. _

_Meredith sat on the chair dressed with a hospital gown and looked at the doctor. She was aware of what was about to happen. She had performed this procedure before herself. She didn't want her to go through with it, but she knew that it was inevitable. She had placed her legs on the stirrups like she had during the pelvic exam the day before or during the first ultrasound. She looked at the speculum before it was inserted into her vagina, she watched her doctor take the clamp that would hold her pelvix in place. She observed her doctor's moves like she was observing a procedure from the gallery, like it hadn't been her that miscarried. Like everything was fine. She had gotten medication that had helped her uterus to widen and watched at her doctor take a curette from the table. In a second she'd feel the touch of the Instrument despite her uterus being numbed. And there it was- the scrapping of the lining and the sound of suction. Nobody held her h_ _and, Maggie would have_ _offered to after she had called her the day before, but she didn't want to burden her and after 20 minutes she was done, ready to go, ready to leave like nothing had ever happened. It hadn't been her fault, it had been nobody's fault." Those things happened. We're so sorry" The staff at the practice had told her, but it didn't feel like a consolation._

* * *

Meredith sat on a sofa in a bridal saloon waiting for Callie to come out again. Callie had tried on about thirty dresses that all looked alike to Meredith. She almost admired her stamina. „Meredith, I can't decide and it's important. White, soft white, ivory or champagne." Callie said after she came out of the changing room again. The sales person looked annoyed, but she was polite anyway as Meredith had told her Callie's Story.  
„Relax Callie." Meredith smiled and walked up to her.  
„People are going to notice. People are going to care." Callie insisted „Technically it's my second marriage, I shouldn't wear white. Is ivory okay?  
„Callie, I don't even remember my own wedding. I wore a black dress I bought for $85 at Macy's a few years before that." Meredith smiled and tried to think of that night. „Do you remember what Cristina's dress looked like?  
„No." Callie admitted.  
„You remember that she didn't get married." Meredith explained „As long as you do get married, nobody will remember the dress. They'll remember that you looked happy and beautiful. Did that help?" She hoped it did.  
„Yes. It did." Callie nodded „You are good at that. Sort of. You are excellent at it considering that you are getting divorced. How's Boston?"  
„The Chief of surgery hit on me until I mentioned that I have a kid." Meredith smiled „The guy who interviewed me in New York couldn't shut up about what a pity it was to have lost Derek to Seattle Grace and what a privilege it was working with him… I had a great time in Boston. I mean I missed Christopher, but working with Dr. Springer and Dr. Avery has been a true priviledge. Jackson's grandfather is awesome."  
„They fired you here and you are working with Harper Avery?" Callie asked in awe.

„'Dr. Grey' is a brand and our glioma trial did help." Meredith smiled „and Jackson did. But I'm going to be back for the wedding."  
„That was something I was not worried about, Meredith." Callie said „Don't you think it's like running away?  
„It's not like I have that much of a choice if I want to continue my residency." Meredith smiled.  
„You're impressive." Callie said.  
„Am I?" Meredith wondered.  
„Look, there's always been a lot of hype surrounding you, okay? "Meredith Grey, ooh, child of Ellis." "Ooh, isn't she so special?""Callie paraphrased.  
„I don't have to be your maid of honor." Meredith said.  
„No, no, no, that's not that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you're tougher than I thought." Callie said „I'm saying, you're smart. I'm saying okay, look you know, we've never been friends, not even when I was with George. Mainly because you thought I was a freak and you're blonde and very And now you have a kid, and I have a baby, and we're both married, and I don't know. I'm saying, we're both alike."  
„You're not a freak. We both get married in Vegas, it takes a certain kind of crazy to do that and we are friends." Meredith smiled „We are both mothers. And for the record I never condoned what Izzie did with George. And now I have a husband to talk to."  
„I really hope you get Zola back." Callie still felt guilty.  
„I really hope you and Sofia." Meredith started, but Callie interrupted her „I'm not her mom. A mom is warm and caring and protective"  
„You will become her mother. She is your child. She may have left your womb prematurely, but you are her mother and …" Meredith paused and remembered her procedure. „Sometmes it takes us a long time to heal, but she's alive and I'm sure she's beautiful -and one day you'll feel like it."  
When the girls walked out of the saloon the police pulled up and asked Callie to come with them. They had found him.

* * *

 _Meredith looked at the entrance. It was day one again, the first day at MassGen after procedure. She felt as torn as the day she had ca_ _me_ _in for the interview. This time she didn't feel conflicted about leaving her son behind, but she did about f_ _eeling of relief about the end of her pregnancy. H_ _er daughter had died inside her womb. She was relieved and at the same_ _time she was misera_ _ble. The life she had dreamed of having was never going to happen. Derek wouldn't be swept away by the sheer cuteness of their daughter and she'd be alone. She was going to be alone when she was going to watch his Harper Avery Award acceptance speech and Alex was probably never going to w_ _ork at Mass Gen._

 _She walked into the locker room and looked at her scrub pants. There was no n_ _eed to wear the bigger ones any longer_ _. The small ones were fine again. „Are you okay?" a woman asked. She turned around and looked Maggie. „I was worried. I heard you were sick. God I hate it if you are sick and…"_

 _„I'm fine. I don't want to talk about it." Meredith said „I was sick and now I'm fine. Thanks for listening the other day_ _"_

 _Maggie hugged her and it felt good to be hugged._

 _„Did you pass?" Meredith wondered._

 _„I did. Damn right I did!" Maggie smiled and hugged her again. „So you are okay?"_

 _„I'll be fine" Meredith nodded._

 _„Meredith, if you n_ _eed somebody, you can always talk to me." Maggie smiled and handed her a chart. „Like, right now, my first surgery as a fellow"_

 _„I don't think I'm ready to talk yet, but thank you anyway, I'm in." Meredith smiled and they both got up._

 _Meredith looked at the Chart. „She's pregnant"_

 _„and waiting for a heart transplant. It's only a very minor procedure." Maggie said calmly, but by looking at the chart Meredith jumped to another conclusion „Yeah, like defusing a bomb is something you do on a Thursday before lunch."_

* * *

Arizona had sent Alex to check on Callie because she was stuck in an endless surgery marathon that required her full attention. He opened the door and found the apartment empty. He checked in the bedroom, the bath room, walked through the living room. By the time he reached the kitchen he noticed a small sob. He walked to the door and opened the supply closet. He opened it and looked at Callie, took her hand and they both sat down on the couch „Arizona send me to check on you" he said „You were in the closet, Callie."  
„Look, I'm… I'm doing the best I can." Callie said and tried to dry her tears.  
„No, I know you are. I do." Alex said.  
„It's the baby." Callie sobbed.  
„Does she have 11 toes or something?" Alex teased her.  
„She's perfect. She's absolutely perfect. She's the baby in the commercial, she's so perfect." Callie cried „And I I look at her, and I feel nothing. I can't feel anything ever since the I mean, there's this pressure to be all "mommy," and I'm just I'm not. I'm not ready or something. I feel completely detached from her like she has been ripped from my body. I just I don't I don't want to deal with her. I just want to stick her in the freezer. Maybe thaw her out later when I'm ready to deal with her. That's a… that's a horrible thing to say, isn't it?  
„Yes." Alex nodded „But it's not the most horrible thing I ever said or heard and those horrible things … they're things that need to be said. I told Meredith I was glad that Izzie died."  
„The first time I held her, I felt amazing but right now, I just want to …" Callie paused „I don't know. I don't know… I feel like I'm not strong enough to be her mother. Every time she starts to cry, I can't take it, I can't take it and I want to… I don't know, I just don't feel like a mother. And my mother insulted me on the phone, my father is refusing to talk to me."

Alex and Callie had never been close „I know what it's like to have life hand you so much crap, you just want to sit on the couch and die. But you gotta look at what's in front of you. Something terrible happened to you, but that doesn't make you a victim." Alex said „Your parents giving you crap about your life choices and you staying in silence because of it- that what makes you a victim. Maybe some of us will never be fully okay, but at least we are here. You are here. You are still trying and doing the best you can. That's worth something. You survived and Sofia survived, that's something and if staying in the supply closet helps, just stay there another while. I won't give you crap about it."

„I really want to be fine, Alex, but I'm not. I mean… No, no, no, I'm not okay, I bought a dress, I get married. This should be the happiest time of my life"

* * *

 _Meredith was bleeding. She knew that some bleeding was normal after a procedure like this, but she was through her fourth pad in the past two hours and it kept bleeding. She got up from the toilet and hoped it would stop and the fifth would contain the fluids during the surgery Maggie and she were about to perform._

 _Thirty minutes into the surgery Meredith's head began to spin. There were lights and sounds, but they seemed distance, for a moment it felt like everything happened in slow motion. She fell and hit the floor, the nurses looked at her and Maggie yelled „Get somebody in here" while she kept treating the Patient. Two residents who had observed the procedure in the Gallery started to examine her. „She's bleeding" one of the residents noticed. „Page OB and tell them to prep an OR"._

 _„You better take care of her, Ronald." Maggie said when they wheeled Meredith out of the OR. „Keep me posted."_

 _Five hours later Maggie had finally finished the surgery. She was exhausted, but wanted to check on Meredith. After her intern had given her Meredith's Chart, she said „Oh, there must be a mistake" Maggie said „I asked you for Meredith Burn's file, this is Meredith Grey's Chart."_

 _„Oh, that's her name according to her insurance Details and her living will." The intern said. „She's sleeping now, so you might want to come back tomorrow."_

 _„Oh, I'll just sit here." Maggie smiled. „Thank you."_

* * *

Meredith was waiting for her lawyer in front of the building where she was supposed to meet the lawyer that had formerly taken care of the adoption. Once she saw Derek she turned around as she wasn't ready to talk to him, but he had seen her and he had looked at her „Meredith, let me talk to you." He insisted.

„No, Derek, I have eyes, I saw what happened. I saw her lips touching yours. If you wanted to get back to me for allegedly kissing Allen, you did a fine Job." Meredith told him. „Let's just finalize the divorce. I mean you filed for divorce weeks ago. We can figure out visitation."

„Are you going to take him with you?" Derek wondered.

„I can't live without him." Meredith said „I thought I could, but I can't."

„You just like your mother. Richard was so so right about you." Derek yelled.

„Don't you ever mention his name in front of me again!" Meredith yelled.

„You are leaving me!"

„You are kissing your research fellow and you are chatting up your scrub nurse." Meredith told him „May I remind you that we are still married! What was that? Some sort of marital amnesia?"

„You woke up naked on your coworker's couch." He screamed.

„No, you don't get to play you did- I did with me, you don't get to put me down, I didn't cheat on you, you cheated on me!" Meredith looked at him and saw that her lawyer had just arrived „I came back to work on this, on us, but you are obviously not interested, so just … go upstairs"

* * *

Meredith and her lawyer walked into the conference room where Derek was already waiting. Meredith and her lawyer sat down on the opposite side. Meredith didn't look at Derek. She couldn't, what they were about to discuss was too hard. „Oh, Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Grey, it's a pleasure to see you again." Their lawyer said. Derek and Meredith's lawyer exchanged a surprised look as the man in his mid 50s continued. „Are you here to discuss the next steps in Zola's adoption?"

„No" Derek stammered „actually, no, we are here to talk about…" he looked around for help.

„the divorce and visiting schedules for Christopher. This is Jeremy Fitzpatrick, my lawyer." Meredith introduced the man to her right.

„My client and I are sure that given…" Jeremy started and extended his hand to his colleague.

„everything that happened." Meredith added and looked at Derek.

„we can settle everything out of court." Jeremy nodded.

„Meredith" Derek said.

Meredith interrupted him „No, Derek, we talked about this. You sent over the papers weeks ago. I'll sign them once we figured out what to do with Chris."

„Meredith, I'm trying here…" Derek tried to encourage to change her mind.

Meredith let out a laugh „Really, are you?" she wanted to know „You kissing other women accounts for trying now?"

„Why don't we all calm down?" Jeremy wondered.

They both stopped to speak and looked at each other for a Moment. „I want custody" Meredith stated calmly „He's going to live with me and you can see him whenever you want to… despite what you said, I'm not my mother."

„Oh, yeah, I'll just drop by after work" Derek coughed „You are living full way across the Country, Meredith! He'll stay with me."

„Your Family lives on the east coast – your sisters, your mother, everyone you care about." Meredith said „Why won't you move to Boston or New York or whatever?"

„Actually, in the drafted divorce papers you sent over a few weeks after you got married to my client, you stated that she'd get full custody…" Jeremy said

„Of the children we didn't have back then" Derek yelled. „I love my son and I don't want to see him grow up through a computer screen. I want to be there when he's at soccer practice. I want to be there when he starts riding his bike. I want to do what my dad couldn't."

„Well, the passage was included in the version you sent over to my client a few weeks ago." Jeremy said and handed over a copy where the respective passage had been highlighted with a pink highlighter. Derek looked at his lawyer.

„So technically I already agreed to it." He bit his tongue and got up „Congratulations Meredith, I hope you have a wonderful life."

* * *

Working had been Derek's escape lately and today was no different. „What do you mean?" Owen asked after Derek had told him why he was still mad at Meredith.  
„A family means you are sharing all your secrets but Meredith didn't even tell me about the suspension – she told all her friends about it." He said and kept looking at the screen in front of him. One wrong move and he'd gorge a human being forever. „and now she just packs up and leaves"  
„You are her boss. At work you are her boss." Owen said „And Callie – that was work"  
„She lied to the social worker." Derek insisted „How do you live like this? I mean Cristina is telling all her secrets to Meredith."  
„Do you ever have the feeling like you don't get her?" Owen wondered. „Oh yeah, sometimes Cristina and Meredith are like ET and Elliot. If Elliot gets drunk, ET gets drunk. Meanwhile we are like the government people in the white hazmat suits. We try to steer them in the right direction, but in the end we just don't understand.

„And I want to be Elliot for her." Derek said.  
„But can you live with being the hazmat guy?" Owen wondered. 

* * *

_Meredith was in a hospital bed and looked up at Maggie. She was wearing a h_ _ospital gown and the last t_ _hing she remembered was passing out „Your last Name is Grey"_ _Maggie said. She wasn't angry, but she didn't seem to be excited either. It was a matter of fact tone._

 _„You know" Meredith said and waited for another reaction._

 _„They asked me to call your emergency contact" Maggie said and handed over her file to Meredith._

 _„You called Derek?" Meredith wondered._

 _„He didn't answer." Maggie said and after a short pause she went back to the elephant in the room „So you…"_

 _„are Meredith Grey. Yes" Meredith nodded. „I'm your sister."_

 _„Why didn't you tell me?" Maggie wondered „I mean, you must have known for a while. Didn't you want me to know?"_

 _„I didn't know until two weeks ago, Maggie and I wanted to tell you." Meredith said „I just didn't want to tell you before your boards because I know how finding out you have a sister messes you up. I never knew about the adoption until a year ago. I found some proofs in mom's diaries. She had all those diaries -she wrote everything down."_

 _„What was she like?" Maggie wondered „I mean… as a p_ _erson"_

 _„She wasn't very warm, but I begin to understand her, what she has been thinking and I don't hate her for what she did anymore." Meredith explained „She might have been this incredible superwoman in the OR, but I learned that she was just a human being outside -flawed and lonely."_

 _„When I found out that she was my mom, I… I always imagined…" Maggie said with the admiration most female surgeons talked about her „Can you tell me why she..?"_

 _„I could, but it's not my place to tell." Meredith said „You could ask the man who fathered you."_

 _„You know who it was?" Maggie wondered „His n_ _ame wasn't on the birth certificate."_

 _„A jackass. He's the reason I had to come here- and the reason Ellis left Seattle, the reason why I didn't see my father for twenty five years, the reason why I never knew I had three sisters." Meredith's eyes started to tear up „But he's the one that should tell you, but Ellis wanted you to be okay."_

 _„Why Boston?" Maggie wondered._

 _„It always felt like home. I've been living here for a while." Meredith smled „I wasn't Ellis Grey's daughter here, I was just me and it felt good not to be anyone for a while. It felt good."_

 _„Meredith. You said you didn't know what love was. You know now – someone must have taught you." Maggie said._

 _„He has." Meredith said and pointed her pen to her emergency contact._

* * *

„I'm giving you a heads up, I'm going to hand in my resignation tomorrow." Derek said „I don't care about the repercusions."

„Is it because of Richard?" the chairman of the board wondered.

„What do you mean?" Derek wondered.

„We've been hearing all kind of complaints for the past few weeks, there's even been a case of…" he paused and Derek eyed him suspiciously.

„A case of what?" Derek tried to investigate.

„He made a mistake… he clipped of the common bile duct… and he's made a lot of them lately. A few attendings complained about him." He explained. „So why do you want to leave?"

„My wife… Things have been…" Derek paused. „not easy and she is working at MassGen now. She has custody and I don't want to see my son grow up on a computer screen."

„If there's anything we can do…" the chairman said trying to keep his number one surgeon in Seattle.

„You can… offer her her old Job." Derek said „I'm going wherever they are going."

* * *

For a moment everything felt normal and natural to Meredith. She was drinking a goodbye beer with Alex, Cristina and Jackson. George was in the ER and Lexie had been paged for a surgery with Derek. It almost felt like nothing had changed. Meredith remembered the nights during the intern year where it had been her, Alex, George, Izzie and Cristina. Those nights seemed like a lifetime ago. „I'm going to Africa for 3 months" Alex cheered as he raised his class „Here's to you suckers who have to stay around treating hernias."  
„I'm going back to Boston. I won't be back." Meredith toasted „To growing artificial brains that work better than my husband's."  
„Seriously?" Alex choked on his beer.  
„I like the job, I like the research." Meredith smiled „It's not like I have a choice."  
„You could have taken the spot in Tacoma." Cristina insisted. „The commute is not too bad."  
„Mass. Gen. is the better hospital and I know Boston. I lived there for 13 years, you know." Meredith smiled „and it's far away."  
„Mass Gen, are you sure? I hate that place." Jackson muttered „Sanders is still waiting for you! And Sawyer!  
„I can look after myself." Meredith assured him „And Sawyer is doing his fellowship somewhere else. It's not your fault I lost my job. I'm just afraid I'll become my mother if I take Christopher with me. Christ, I'm like my mother. When Derek and I talked last week, I thought, for just a second I let myself lean in to the fear of getting a happy ending, I thought we would make it."  
„Well it sort of is my fault -all of our faults." Jackson reminded her „Living on opposite sides of the country isn't exactly considered …"  
„Meredith, don't you think that they are going to give you your job back if you ask them." Alex wondered „I mean, Seattle Grace Mercy West dropped in the rankings, they must be desperate for capable applicants."  
„I'm not going to beg them and Derek doesn't want me back." Meredith said and tried to get them to talk about something else. „So you are going to Africa?"  
„Yeah, lots of surgeries and I finally get out of here for a while." Alex nodded „Away from Webber – mostly."  
„So you are going to kill children in Africa, evil Spawn?" Cristina teased him.  
„Shut up." Alex said  
„Lucky you." Cristina said and looked at a person at a table on the other side of the room „What is Webber doing here?"  
„Trying to ruin another career perhaps, but then again, my career isn't ruined." Meredith mumbled.

* * *

„ _Meredith, I_ _n_ _eed you to go to Seattle." Harper Avery told her "Talk to Derek and take care of your son."_

 _„I… I can't…" Meredith stuttered._

 _„You can, Meredith. You gave Ellis the strength she needed and you have always been strong. But sometimes it takes all our strength to admit that we are weak and vulnerable, that we have f_ _eelings and that those f_ _eelings can hurt us and destroy us." He said „You'll be an excellent surgeon one day, Meredith, but I also want you to be a happy p_ _erson and I think you n_ _eed to go back and figure t_ _hings out. I saw you and Christopher."_

 _„I… what if it's over?" Meridith asked cautiously._

 _„Then it's over and you'll pick up the pieces and you'll build something new. It takes c_ _ourage and strength, but we have to face our fears, our shortcomings" he smiled mit encouragement. „If we don't step up, we don't achieve anything. Our accomplishments are not measured by the trophies or prizes we win, they are measured by the smiles and laughs you come home to. If you don't have those, all those trophies and prizes are worthless."_

 _„You miss him." Meredith noticed._

 _„I thought about him every day since he left, I thought about him on Jackson's first day of School, during his high s_ _chool graduation, when he graduated college and med s_ _chool, when Catherine told me she was going to kill him after he had brought the first g_ _irl home" the old man recounted the numerous occassions where he had felt his son's presence."I'm always thinking about him and I never stopped thinking about him. Don't make my mistakes."_

 _„Be extraordinary! She really wasn't talking about surgery." Meredith nodded._

 _„Who are you talking about?" Dr. Avery asked her._

 _„Mom." For the first time in a long while Meredith felt at peace with something. The woman she had detested for most of her teenage and adult life had always wanted her to be happy „She wanted me to be happy and she wanted Maggie to be happy."_

 _„Be happy Dr. Grey." Dr. Avery nodded._

* * *

It was 1.00 am and the others had left. Meredith had just paid her drinks when Richard Webber walked up to her „Meredith, I'm probably the last person you want to listen to."

„You are right about this" she mumbled and tried to ignore him.

„Meredith, don't walk away. It's good to see you." He said. „How have your first few days at Mass. Gen. Been?"

„Fine." She said, but he wouldn't back off

„Given the recent developments it's a tremendous opportunity. Your…" he started to say while putting his arm around her shoulders, but she snapped. „Don't you tell me what to do, and don't talk to me! The drop in the ratings happened. What do you expect from me now? Gratitude? Gratitude because you fired me and I found a better job somewhere else. You are the reason I'm in this mess in the first place! Mom went away and was way more successful than you, she got a chance to forget you."

„Do you think she did?" he wondered. How dared he to ask?

„I don't know, but you destroyed her!" Meredith yelled and grew increasingly louder. „She was a sweet smart and nice girl that was stuck in a marriage without love. You promised to be her knight in shining whatever and at the last minute you bailed on her and her child leaving her no choice but to leave! You are a coward and you always have been!" By the time she was finished almost everyone in the bar was looking at them.

„Meredith…" Richard tried to Interrupt Meredith, but she kept screaming. „Do not Interrupt me! I'm not finished! The girl you fathered is amazing! But you deserve absolutely no credit for that! She's amazing and loyal and dorky. She can be glad that she never had to be with you! So if you don't mind, I'll go back to the hotel now."

Richard Held on to her arm. „Meredith, she told you to be extraordinary. We didn't try hard enough. We could have had…"

Meredith swallowed and looked at her mother's ex Lover „…it all? A life? Whatever you could have had, you chose to go the other way. Whatever happened with you and Ellis and Maggie, that's on you!"

„Maggie? You know her?" Richard wondered.

„I do." Meredith nodded.

„Whatever happens between you and Derek and Christopher is on you, Meredith. You can choose to leave Seattle, you can take your son with you, you can become the best surgeon you can be, but you are always going to ask yourself what might have happened. That decision is on you and you need to let go of all that anger because ultimately it's your choice" Richard said. „It never stops, the years pass by and you still smell her shampoo, you still hear her smile and…"

„You should go home to your wife, Dr. Webber." Meredith reminded him. „After all that's what you know how to do best."

„Ellis forgave me, Meredith. You should too. Go home to your husband, Dr. Grey." Richard said. „That's something you Grey women never learned."

* * *

 _Life has a funny way of working out just when you start to believe it never will. There are patients who survive the night despite having zero change, the bleeding stops and all you do is wonder, why it happened. And from one moment to the next you are able to let go, to forgive and to go back to where you came from._

* * *

Meredith sat in Derek's office. She was going to leave in the morning and she wanted a proper goodbye this time. They had discussed the Details of Christopher's Visitation schedule and when he was supposed to stay with whom when Derek suddenly brought up something different. „I'm still your emergency contact person." He said and Meredith looked at him in shock. She feared that he might bring up the reason she had collapsed on a hospital toilet during her shift.

„Yeah. I never changed it. I still want you to be my person." She admitted, but tears started to build up in her eyes until one was running down her cheek „They called you and you didn't answer, Maggie said so and I can't ...I can't remember our last kiss. All I could think about was I'm going to die and I can't remember our last kiss. Which is pathetic, but the last time we were together and happy, I want to be able to remember that. And I can't Derek. I can't remember."

 _„_ I'm glad you didn't die." Derek said and looked at the picture of them and Christopher. „It was a Thursday morning. You were wearing that ratty little Dartmouth T-shirt you look so good in. The one with the hole in the back of the neck. You were holding Christopher. You'd just washed your hair and you smelled like some kind of flower. I was running late for surgery. You said you were gonna see me later and you leaned to me, you put your hand on my chest and you kissed me. Soft. Was quick, kinda like a habit. You know, like we'd do it every day for the rest of our lives. You went back to reading the newspaper and I went to work. That was the last time we kissed. Do you want to tell me why they called?"

„No it doesn't matter now, anyway, does it?" Meredith said. They had lost a Baby and it would never come back „You were with her that night, weren't you?"

„I was, but we talked, all we did was talk." Derek said „About our research."

„That's the whole story? Just talk." Meredith said „Did she just kiss you out of the blue? That's hard to believe."

„That's all that happened." Derek nodded.

„Goodbye Derek!" Meredith got up. When he had talked about the last time they had kissed it seemed like there was hope and she really needed something to hope for.

* * *

 _So… just to give you a heads up… this chapter is pretty much rock bottom, it was devastating and cruel, but I felt it was necessary to start a healing process, not only for Meredith, but also for Callie and Lexie to a certain extent. Healing - going back to a happiness you once had is going to be a major theme for the following chapters._

 _I have to warn you though… I'll be in Sri Lanka for two weeks, so there's going to be a break after the update next week._

 _Everything that happened between Mer and Der in italics (Hopkins, the Harper Avery, the fellowship) was Meredith's Imagination. Wishful thinking! I liked the angle so much though, that I'm actually considering to do a short 5-6 chapter story on that. What do you guys think?_


	38. Chapter 38

_Took a while as I'm preparing for my Sri Lanka holiday. So excited, yeah! This will be the last chapter for a while. WOn't return until the 16th of March._

 _Susan: Hope this chapter is a little more quiet. I think it's a good moment for a short hiatus._

 _Shelley: Giving you something more to digest_

 _Melanie: Hope this chapter justifies your trust ;)_

 _Cindy Lou: Not too much of a cliffhanger in this chapter._

 _Margaret: They are definitely MFEO. Continuing beyond residency... nay... I'm not too sure about it. I quite like the last chapter I wrote (which is completely finished)._

 _Hasi: Everything in italics that happened in the last few chapters in Boston was Meredith's imagination. The miscarriage actually did happen. I thought about abortion, but in the end I decided that it wouldn't be in character for Meredith to have one._

 _greysfann: The sun will rise again ;)_

 _Clarice: You are half wrong about Derek following Meredith._

 _Patsy: Things are getting better for Meredith and Derek._

* * *

 **Chapter 38** : 4th year

 _There's this thing I used to do when I was a kid, to my mother's VCR. I'd take it apart, piece by piece and then put it back together again. But inevitably, there was always a piece or two left over, something I didn't quite know what to do with. So what do you do with that piece? Do you try to fit it back in? Do you try to make it work? Or do you decide that you can live without that missing piece?_

* * *

A few minutes after she had left Derek's office Meredith and Alex sat on a gurney in a hallway. It was late at night and even though Meredith wasn't supposed to be in this part of the Hospital anymore, it was highly unlikely that anyone would find out.

„I always thought my mom was cold and now that I know the whole story I keep wondering if she was always like this or if something bad happened and she turned into a robot." She said. „I mean, is this going to happen to me if I leave?"

„You mean if she moved on from Webber? Like truly." Alex nodded „If she was able to let go and be happy."

„Yeah, I mean, I'm moving to Boston with my son and his dad stays in Seattle." Meredith reminded him „There are some parallels here."

„Why don't you talk to Webber? I mean, he might be able to help you." Alex suggested, but Meredith's face turned grim „After all he's been through this before."

„He…" she tried to form a sentence.

„Might have the answers you are looking for" Alex said. „They didn't have a child, or they didn't know they had one…"

„Mom's answers are not my answers. I'm not pregnant." Meredith said, even though she had been „I haven't slept with a married man, and I probably would have stayed if I hadn't been fired. I mean, I don't want Chris to grow up like me, but I don't really have a choice and my husband kissed not only one, but two women. I don't think there's something we can rebuild"

„That nurse doesn't count and gosh, that research fellow was a dud either." Alex said.

* * *

In the meantime Derek had been paged to the ER where the victims of a car crash arrived. The first two ambulances came in and the patients were dead on arrival. The third ambulance brought in a kid with a compressed spine. Derek looked at the teen and noticed that he wasn't too scared even though he couldn't move his legs at the Minute „Dr. Shepherd, can you do me a favor? There's this girl Sara. Sara Hughes. She's at my school and we are taking AP Physics together. I like her, I really do. She always smiles and waves when I walk past her. Can you tell me if she's okay?" he wondered.  
„I'm afraid I can't. I'm bound by doctor patient confidentiality." Derek said.  
„Just nod if she's okay. Please!" he begged, but Derek knew that he had called time of death for her on arrival.  
„I can't nod." He said.

The boy hadn't yet realised that the Girl he had had a crush on for the past ten years wasn't okay and continued to beg. „Come on, haven't you ever been in love? Don't you remember what it's like to look at a girl and to know she's the one."  
„How long have the two of you been dating?" Derek wondered.  
„Oh, we haven't. She doesn't know I exist." The boy said.  
„How can you be sure she's the one?"  
„Don't you know what it's like to look at a girl and to know no matter what happens you will always think that she's the most amazing creature on this planet and you want to spend the rest of my life with her?" the boy asked and Derek realized that he did.  
„I thought I did." He nodded.  
„How did you win her over?" the boy wondered.  
„I worked my charm. I walked up to her and bought her a drink, we got married that night." Derek said with a sad tone that the boy caught immediately.  
„What happened after that?" he asked „Is she dead?"  
„We build a house, had a son." He said and paused. They both had been stubborn.  
„What made you change your mind?" the boy wondered. „She isn't dead, is she?"  
„She ran away." Derek said „She's working in Boston"  
„Did she come back?" the Boy wondered.  
„Yes." Derek nodded „to sort things out"  
„Don't they say that 'if you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours forever'? I mean she did come back." The boy said „Please tell me how Sara is, just nod if she's okay."  
„I can't nod, I'm sorry." Derek said and bit his lips.  
„She's not coming back." The boy finally realized. But Meredith had and Derek finally realized that the fact that she had come back now meant that there still was a chance.

* * *

After Derek had gotten out of surgery he immediately went to buy flowers – lavender- and Meredith's favorite chocolate. He'd pick up Christopher and they'd go on one last play date before they both left.

Meredith opened the door and saw that 200 pods of lavender on her deck. „Derek, you can't treat people like shit and then expect them to love you because of one Grand gesture. That's not how it works. You're doing this because of the custody ruling"

„If you choose to believe this, but I'm not" Derek muttered. „I saw you, 800 days ago. I was drowning and you pulled me out of the water. Meredith, I didn't kiss my assistant, she kissed me, it wasn't amicable."

„Leave me alone. I'll get Christopher for you" Meredith shut the door. Derek rang the door bell again and Alex opened this time.

„Leave her alone. You lost every right to talk to her." He yelled „I'll kick your ass the next time you…"

„Alex" Meredith interrupted him.

„I'm sorry I stood up to him" Alex shrugged.

„You don't have to save me, neither of you." Meredith insisted and handed over Christopher to Derek „I need no saving. I'm not Bambi. I don't need to be saved. Good bye Derek."

„I really hope you are finding the happiness you are pretending to have in Boston." Derek said „I'm sorry, Meredith. I talked to the board."

* * *

The day was spent with filling in forms and registering boxes for the moving company. It had been exhausting and Meredith needed some time off. There was one person in her life that didn't have an awful lot of company lately. Meredith went over to Callie's apartment one last time before leaving in the morning. Callie was somebody she was able to share her problems with „I know what's going to help. At least for now!" She pulled out a bottle of tequila.

„A bottle of Jose?" Callie laughed „Really? You'll be sorry in the morning"

„I'm always sorry in the morning." Meredith said and maybe she wouldn't think about leaving so much with a gigantic headache.

Callie pulled away the bottle and looked at Meredith sternly. „You are telling yourself that you are better off without him, he thinks he's better off without you and you miss him and Meredith, Derek misses you. So perhaps it's just one big fat lie both of you are hiding behind."

„Why do you make this harder on me?" Meredith tried to get the bottle back.

„Because I know all it takes is one minute, one stupid decision by someone else and your whole life is destroyed." Callie said „They found the guy who pushed me. He confessed."

Meredith smiled „That's …"

„brilliant?" Callie asked „No it isn't. Nothing changed, I'm still not back working and I… it happened, and no amount of sorrys can make this undone and I hate Sofia for it and this is clearly the most pathetic thing you ever heard"

„I was pregnant and I lost it and Derek doesn't know and a part of me feels relieved that I lost it because having another baby would make things incredibly hard." Meredith said. „I lost a baby and I'm happy about it. That's the kind of person I am now."

„Thank you! I'm actually feeling better now." Callie said „I look at Sofia and I wanna love her, but I can't. I can't and I don't know why. This kid, he took a piece of me…I feel incomplete"

* * *

Meredith, Alex, George and Cristina were standing at the airport. „So this is goodbye." Meredith looked at her watch and Christopher.  
„I'll be back." Alex hugged her. „Take care"  
„And you'll be back too Meredith." George said „I'm trying to talk to Webber again."  
„Are you sure you don't want to wait for Derek?" Cristina wondered.  
„Cristina, he's not coming. He hates me for this and I hate myself for this." Meredith mumbled.  
„Meredith, you have another 20 minutes." Cristina suggested.  
„Guys, I have to go." Alex said and left them.  
„Bye Alex." Meredith and Cristina said at the same time.  
„He's not coming. He …" Meredith said.  
„… hold on…" Cristina interrupted her „I got a text from Avery…"  
„What's the matter?" Meredith wondered.  
„They talked to the Chief and he made him talk to the board. And as it turns out Derek convinced them to give you your job back." Cristina said.  
„You don't turn down a job at MassGen and I can't work with Derek because that would require talking." Meredith said  
„You are running. You don't run." Cristina insisted „You might not need saving, but you should stop running."  
„I ran. Good bye Cristina." Meredith said „I'll call you if we are in Boston."

 _"We have to go now Meredith. Our flight is leaving"  
"I don't want to go mommy. I want to see daddy"  
"You can't Meredith. We are going to Boston because mommy is going to work in Boston. Be a good girl Meredith and don't act out."  
"But mommy…"  
"What did I tell you Meredith? We are playing the quiet game and your father won't see you anymore"  
"Mommy, I really don't want to go! Anatomy Jane is still at the house. I need her"!  
"There's no time, Meredith. We have to leave. I can't breathe if I stay here much longer" _

Derek ran to the gate. „Sir, boarding was completed 5 minutes ago. We already closed the doors."  
„You don't understand. I really have to go." Derek insisted.  
„You are too late Sir." The woman repeated.  
„Please, hear me out. The woman I love and our son are in there and she's going to move to the other side of the country with him if I don't stop her now." He said „I have to stop her because I don't want to be apart from them. We had a fight, I was stubborn and she was stubborn, but our son is too important to me, what we had is too important to me. I can't let her get away"  
„Dada! Dada!" Christopher shouted. Meredith had been to the rest room and now pushed the stroller.  
Derek hadn't noticed their presence yet and continued. „I can't live without her and I love our family and I love what we have. I'm willing to fight for it and I hope she is too. So please let me in there."  
„You might want to turn around Sir." The woman smiled.  
„Dada" Christopher smiled.  
„Christopher? Meredith?" Derek stuttered „Meredith, I thought you were taking the plane."  
„I was. And then I couldn't go because your son was crying and wanted to see his daddy – and I remembered when mom took me to Boston." Meredith explained. „I'm not my mother. I don't want my son to grow up in a hospital gallery. I don't want to take him away from his dad. I probably ruined our chances to adopt Zola, but I owe our son the chance to grow up with his dad. And they offered to give me my job back. Why are you here?"  
„I had to come and see you."

* * *

Meredith and Derek were riding home in his car. „Is the music okay for you?" Derek wondered.  
„The Clash is fine, you like the Clash." Meredith said and looked out the window. They were driving into Seattle again, a road she had never been on, but Derek said it was a shortcut.  
„I was asking if you like it." He told her.  
„It's fine 'cause you like it." She said a little aggressive.  
„I was asking if you want to listen to it." Derek insisted.  
„I told you I love you in a pretend to like your taste in music kind of way. Remember? So I'll just pretend I like your taste in music now." Meredith said and they both turned quiet. The lyrics to ‚Should I stay or should I go?' seemed almost ironic given their current situation.

When they arrived home, Meredith put down her bags in the living room. They were both quiet and looked at each other „You came." Meredith finally said.  
„Meredith, let me bring Christopher to his room" Derek said and focused on the road „But yeah. I had to. I promised you I'd always show up. I forgot about it for a while, but I remembered just in time. You didn't leave either."  
„I stood there, I was ready to board the plane, they called our names and I couldn't move and I remembered you promised to love me even if you hate me." Meredith explained „My mother's and Richard's love story ended with an adoption. I didn't want ours to end the same way. Because if I had left, let's just face it, we'd be over. This long distance thing doesn't work for anybody. I couldn't go to Boston like she did, cut all the bonds, never see anyone again, pretend like none of it happened, I couldn't take our son and leave his dad in Seattle. I couldn't. It's not how it's supposed to happen."  
„Meredith, I told Richard I'd move to Boston with you." Derek explained. „I would have followed you – I'm not Thatcher. I wanted to be in Christopher's life"  
„And see, Derek, it's what Addison did with Mark. She dragged him to another state." Meredith shrugged.  
„I was ready to resign because I'm not Thatcher and I have nothing in Seattle except you and the Christopher." Derek told her. Her and Christopher.  
„I'm glad you came. I heard your speech and it was sweet, but let's face it, it doesn't fix our problems. Do you understand why I wanted to give Callie the opportunity to see Sofia now? You were ready to quit your job for the same thing. Callie wanted to see her."  
„I do." He nodded „But you could have told me. You need to tell me those things."  
„I was going to… before we talked to Janet the first time." She said and they both remembered the moment „But she was early or I was late or whatever and when you told her about how we worked at the hospital it was too late."  
„Is that why you asked if I'd still love you if you weren't a surgeon?" Derek wondered. It had seemed like an odd question back then.  
„Do you think we are going to get her back?" Meredith wondered.  
„I don't know." Derek answered truthfully.  
„Do you think we can survive this?" Meredith asked.  
„I hope so." he said and looked at her. The look on her face indicated that she wasn't sure and that she was afraid to find the question.  
„I have to call Mass. Gen. If we want to fix this whole mess, I think we have to talk." Meredith said and took out her phone „We really need to talk about all of this. About Boston, about you kissing this nurse"  
„about you sleeping naked on someone else's couch" Derek added. „You run and when you were in trouble you didn't come to me for help. You didn't tell me anything. I love you. I love you just about enough that if you'd leave again it'd destroy me. Completely destroy me."  
„You were busy and…" Meredith tried to explain, but he interrupted her.  
„You don't trust me Meredith – not enough to share your secrets with me." Derek explained. „You share those with Lexie or Cristina or Alex or George. Why didn't you tell me about the suspension, Meredith?"  
„I didn't want to disappoint you." Meredith said.  
„You disappoint me if you don't share something like this with me." Derek answered.  
„You don't understand it, Derek. You are an attending. I couldn't have told you. What would you have done when I told you? You would have yelled and you would have asked me whether I was in my right mind –and you wouldn't have tried to understand it. You are an attending." Meredith insisted „It's not about trust, Derek. I was trying to do what's right and when I saw you with her I thought that you had already moved on and I didn't want to stay stuck in a place where I don't belong any longer. When I saw you kissing Rose -or Renee, I felt like everything broke down into tiny little pieces. I was barely hanging on before that, I mean I was fine when I was in Boston, but when I saw you and Christopher I knew something was missing. And then I saw you kiss them."

„You are right, Meredith. I don't understand it. But I would have liked to know where you were or why you took our son with you or when you put him on a flight across the country back to Seattle with my nosy sister." Derek said. He was still mad that Meredith had left their son with one of his sisters.  
„I'm his mother, Derek."  
„You are." He nodded.  
„You kissed another woman…" Meredith said and Derek interrupted her. „I wasn't kissing her she was kissing me.

„Twice. Two women were kissing you. You didn't stop her, you didn't step away." Meredith said.

„Nothing happened. Give it time Meredith, just give me some time to digest all of this." Derek said „12 hours ago I had lost everything I had, that Christopher would be living on the other side of the country with a person that hated me. I'm going to sleep on the couch tonight."  
„I have to talk to Cristina about this" Meredith said and grabbed the set of spare keys on the counter.

„Why?" he wondered.

„Because she's my person." Meredith said.

„I want to be your person, let me be your person. I love you Meredith, even when I hate you." He yelled „We… we have to work it out. We will work it out. I'll try to trust you, I'll try to be a good listener and you will tell me things. You will try to communicate and you won't run."  
„What about Zola?" Meredith wondered.  
„I don't know if I can forgive you for that."  
„Derek, if you can't there's no point in trying. Because it's always, …" Meredith explained.  
„Meredith, I'm going to try. We'll figure everything out." He calmed her down „I love you.. I'll sleep in the guest room until we figure out our next step, you don't need to sleep on the couch."

* * *

The gallery was half empty. A decompression of the spinal cord was nothing too interesting, but Meredith was watching it anyway. „You look like crap." Lexie told Meredith and handed over a cup of coffee.  
„I haven't slept tonight. I couldn't." Meredith admitted „Our couch is not very comfortable and I had to think and Christopher woke up twice and was crying."  
„Have you considered counseling?" Lexie wondered.  
„Derek and Addison had counseling. That ended well." Meredith noted „I don't think it can fix anything. Look where they are now. How do I apologize for what I did and how do I forgive him?"  
„You don't have anything to apologize for, Mer." Lexie told her.  
„I do. We both do." Meredith insisted.  
„You don't apologize. An apology is only effective if a mistake has been made. You chose to take Callie to the NICU, it wasn't unintentional." Lexie said.  
„But I sort of lied to the social worker, I didn't tell him and I still don't know how to tell him everything." Meredith paused. „Losing my job wasn't the problem, it was the lying. It's my fault we lose her and staying here is not going change the fact that I destroyed what we had."  
„Why are you here anyway?" Lexie wondered. „George said you can have your job back"  
„Dr. Webber and I are going to have a chat about what actions have to be taken for me to come back." Meredith rolled her eyes. The eye rolling had two sources. Richard Webber and the fact that the intern that assisted Derek was flirting with him.  
„Would it be okay to stab her with a scalpel?" Meredith looked at Lexie and pointed at the Girl.  
„You just got your job back or are in the process of getting your job back. I'd be inappropriate to stab people now." Lexie said.  
„There is an appropriate point in time to stab people?" Meredith giggled. „Has she been doing this when I was away?  
„She has been doing this ever since she got here." Lexie said.  
„And she just screwed up the spinal fusion." Meredith said looking at the Monitor „Look at the way she fastened those screws. They aren't going to hold up. The way she used the wire…" She pressed the intercom system button.  
'Derek, pause' she insisted.  
'What's the matter Meredith?' he wondered.  
'If you continue you are going to cut the spine in half. …' Meredith said.  
'I haven't done anything wrong' the resident said looking up.  
'Look at the wire.' Meredith said ‚The way you wrapped it around the vertebrae is going to slice up his spine once he leans forward because you didn't secure the screws properly'  
'Christ, thank you Meredith.' Derek nodded ‚Want to scrub in for the rest?'  
'No, HR is still working on my contract.' Meredith declined and got back on her seat.  
„I saw my half-sister. The one Ellis gave up for adoption" Meredith said „It's weird I always meet you at hospitals."  
„When?" Lexie wondered.  
„Today at the deli." Meredith answered sarcastically „When I was in Boston. She's nice and I told her who I am."  
„What did she say?" Lexie wondered. „I mean you didn't take it well."  
„Not much. She said she needed time because I had taken so long to tell her." Meredith said „I used Ellis' maiden name to avoid all the Ellis Grey hype."  
„Why?"  
„Because I didn't want to be like her for a change." Meredith said.

„You are nothing like your mother, Mer." Lexie encouraged her „Dad talks about her every onces in a while. When I told him you went away he told me that I had to make sure that Derek and you weren't going to make the same mistake he did with you. And he gave me a photoalbum. It's in my locker. You can have it if you want."

* * *

Meredith sat in the cafeteria. She was on her own and had just returned from HR „Thank you" Derek told her after he sat down next to her.  
„For what?" Meredith wondered.  
„For preventing a law suit and hours of unnecessary work." He said. „How did you catch that?"  
„I watched. That's what happens if you flirt with your attending instead of actually doing the work" Meredith looked at him.  
„That girl flirted with me?" Derek asked innocently.  
„Are you that oblivious to the people around you? That intern basically asked to be …" Meredith paused and realized that she was acting like a jealous girlfriend „never mind… don't let her flirt with you."  
„Wyler isn't an intern, It's just flattery. Plus, I thought she might need some encouragement before she's leaving." Derek said. „She's transferring to John Hopkins."  
„Derek, it isn't and she's been doing this ever since the merger. It's like she's in love with you." Meredith said. -Her and Kepner and a few other residents, but she realized that he was somehow still oblivious to all of this.  
„Maybe I'm going to divorce you and we'll run off to Vegas." He teased her.  
„Shut up." Meredith told him and giggled „I hate you, Derek!"  
„Why?"  
„You still try to make me laugh even when I'm angry at you and you are angry with me" she said in a sweet voice.  
„What's the matter, Meredith?" Derek wondered.  
„I missed you, Derek!" Meredith admitted „I really missed you!"  
„What did HR say?" Derek wondered.  
„'Here's your badge, your pager and everything, now please sign this contract. Thank you. Now you have to go and get a psyche eval because what you did was nuts and we have to cover our asses. Please don't kill any patients. Bye'" Meredith paraphrased.  
„Psyche eval? I'm married to a maniac." Derek noted.  
„Don't look at me like I'm crazy." Meredith giggled.  
„We could buy a jacket for the nights, …" he teased her „I love you Meredith and I would have followed you and we are going to get through this. Just come home tonight. I'll make dinner and we'll see how it goes from there."

„One step at a time."

* * *

„You came." George said and looked at Callie who was holding Sofia. He had invited them to dinner.  
„No, wait." Callie told him after he had asked to her to come in. „I I need you to listen. Just listen? Um I want to be a good mother. I want to be a good mother so badly, And, um, I'm trying to figure out how to do that, how to do that when I look at this baby and all I can think of is what happened to me. It changed me, and I don't know how to change it back. But I'm trying to be a good mother, okay?" Callie began to try and handed over the baby to George.  
„Okay." George nodded.  
„And and you're right. You're right. It's not it's it's not just about you and me anymore." She said. Despite their more than complicated past, they had to make it work. „And being a good mother means doing what's best for your child. And you may not understand this, and you may never forgive me for it, but I I walked out that door tonight to do what's best for Sofia. This is what's best for Sofia."  
„You're what's best for Sofia." George said and looked at the diaper bags, toys and everything Callie had brought with her.  
„This is me being a good mom." Callie said and began to cry.  
„Callie? Callie." George hugged her and tried to console him. „Shh, shh, shh."

* * *

„How was MassGen? I want the whole story." Jackson said „I mean my granddad is totally in love with you."  
„It looks a lot more friendly if you aren't a six year old child in an OR gallery. They made an intern give me 'the tour' on my first day" Meredith laughed.  
„and you knew the place better than he did." Jackson rolled his eyes.  
„Yeah. I spend hours there as a child. But I liked working there." Meredith smiled „I was being the old me for a while and it was great. Like a holiday from your normal life -and your granddad- he's amazing."  
„The OR galleries at Brigham are a lot nicer. I learnt how to do my first stitch there." Jackson said „and he's only amazing if your last name isn't Avery."  
„To being royally inbred" Meredith toasted „What's Webber doing here?"  
„He's been here quite often lately." Jackson nodded. In fact he had been there every night.  
„That's odd." Meredith noted. „Have you talked to your granddad since I quit?"  
„He was pretty pissed, but he understands why you aren't coming back." Jackson wondered „and Dr. Shepherd had already asked him for a job when you decided to stay here. So he lost out on an amazing neurosurgeon too."  
„Kepner wears off on you. I can't believe she left for three months." Meredith admitted „When is she coming back?"  
„Neither can I. ‚I'm pretty sure they said that, Dr Shepherd. If I'm wrong, you can spank me. Oh, Chief Shepherd, I do hope I'm wrong.'" he tried to imitate her.  
Meredith looked at her schedule for the week „I hate that Oral Prep stuff. Feels like you planned a terrorist attack and they interrogate you to find out more." She joked. If the boards were anything like this, she couldn't imagine getting through.  
„At my house we call it Sunday dinner." Jackson sighed.  
„World class surgeons have Sunday dinners? Now I feel betrayed" Meredith laughed.

* * *

After Jackson had left, Richard walked up to the place Meredith was sitting at. He looked at her and started talking „Good to have you back, couldn't have lived with myself…"

Meredith took a deep breath, but as he kept talking about what a fine surgeon she was, she couldn't contain herself any longer. „You, you shut up, you did live with yourself, for more than 25 years you've been living with yourself. You ruined my life the day you chose to stay with your wife. You broke her and you don't have to look after me now. I know you promised her you would before she died- but I'll be fine on my own. I have people who are willing to put up a fight for me and you aren't one of them."

„Meredith, I'm very sorry. - For everything." Richard added „I should have fought harder."

„Well, there's nothing we can do about this now." Meredith yelled. Almost everyone at the bar looked at her. Meredith Grey- the crazy resident that had lost her job over helping a friend.

„I would have stayed with her if I had known that she was…" he said hesistantly.

„It doesn't matter now, does it?" Meredith laughed bitterly.

„Welcome back, Dr. Grey." Richard nodded and acknownledged the fact that Meredith wasn't ready to accept his apology.

„Why are you here? In a bar I mean…" Meredith paused and looked at Richard „I thought you were…"

„I wasn't. I misdiagnosed myself" Richard said „I drank because of your mother when she left."

„Oh, she had this effect on people." Meredith nodded and wondered why he was drinking now „Can I ask you a question?"

„Sure." Richard nodded.

„She always thought you didn't pick her because of me, because you never wanted kids." Meredith said „Would you have chosen her if it wasn't for me?"

„You had no part in this" Richard said „I wanted kids, but I didn't want them with Adele and I didn't want to break up her marriage."

„So, if she had told you, you would have…" Meredith hesitated. Maggie turned out good without them. She was happy. Would they have been happy together? Ellis was able to live without him.

„I don't know Meredith. Ellis was always ten steps ahead, I didn't know if I could have that for the rest of my life." Richard said and took another sip from his drink „I loved her Meredith, she was the love of my life."

„Is that the reason you can't look at me? Because I remind you of her." Meredith got up and left Richard on his own. .

* * *

 _When we go without certain things long enough, it's easy to forget just how much we need them. We forget what we had once. We forget what it's like to live with a thing, not that we need, but that we want, That's why it's so important to remind ourselves, for us to remember, just because we can live without something, doesn't mean we have to._

* * *

Upon returning to their house Meredith found her husband in the kitchen „Hey, you are late." He looked at her.  
„Yeah, Dr. Avery and I were grabbing a beer before I came here." Meredith nodded. It had given her just enough time to be ready for the conversation ahead of her.  
„And I just finished dinner, so you can sit down and enjoy chicken parmesan and pasta. It's finished in two minutes." Meredith looked at him. He was nervous and almost dropped the plates when he put the plate down in front of her.  
They both ate in total silence until they both turned their heads and looked at each other „I'm sorry" Meredith and Derek said at the same time, followed by a moment of charged silence.  
„When Rene kissed me, I shouldn't have let it get so far, it was a mistake, but I tried to forget you Meredith because I was trying to persuade myself that I'd be okay without you. But you are everything." He said and nervously juggled a towel from one hand to the other. Meredith could see the regret on his face „When her lips touched mine, I realized that I could never leave you, Meredith. You are everything to me. The thought of losing you… by the time I realized it, it was too late." They starred at each other without saying a word until Derek stuttered "I can't live without you. You... you're everything. I love you and I'm not going to stop loving you. I can't live without you. I don't want to live without you, and I'm going to do everything in my power to prove it. Let me say something. I was resentful and I'm sorry. We'll get through this. You are the most amazing person I ever met and you came back this time."

„But I lied to you and we lost Zola because of it." Meredith said.  
„You didn't mean for it to happen and you and me have to stop blaming and punishing us for it." Derek insisted „I can't live without you, and I want to have five chatty kids with you"

Meredith bid her lips, now wasn't the right to tell Derek about her pregnancy. His words felt like piercing needles nonetheless, but he was there, saying all the words she had wanted to hear for ages. „I can live without you" Meredith looked into Derek's eyes. He was crushed as she had shattered his hopes, but she didn't stop. She looked at him and added „but I don't want to, I don't ever want to."


	39. Chapter 39

As I finished the second Game of Thrones book way earlier than I anticipated, I turned to continuing this story on holidays. This chapter is not inspired by GoT though :P I hope you are happy that you get an update way sooner than announced! I really enjoyed your reviews! In this chapter a few chapter find themselves longing for a place that no longer exists. Meredith finds out what it's like return to a place you once called home after having been to Boston. Originally I had planned for her to stay in Boston a lot shorter, but I liked the idea of her getting to know Maggie and for her to stand on her own to find out what she really wants. I realize that there are a few loose ends in Boston now, but some are going to be addressed for sure.

* * *

 **Chapter** 39

 _It's funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‚I want to go home.' But then you come home, and of course, it's not the same. You can't live with it, you can't live away from it. And it seems like from then on there's always this yearning for some place that doesn't exist. I felt that. Still do. I'm never completely at home anywhere._

„Sleep in our bed tonight. We'll figure it out, we got a letter from the court." Derek told Meredith who had made her bed in the living room again. She had slept on the ever since she had gotten back. Derek hadn't changed anything in the house while she was away, yet it felt like a different place. He put the envelope on the table. While she reached for it he told her „They told us our hearing date. It's in six weeks. We'll get Zola back, you got your job back and everything is going to be fine."  
„Do you think we can get her back?" Meredith asked him.  
„Everything is going to be fine, Meredith." He tried to be optimistic and smiled at her. They both knew that it would help them to heal and sleeping in separate rooms meant they still had a mile to go.  
„No, I'm worried about the hearing date with the judge." Meredith looked at the letter. In six weeks they'd have to persuade a judge that they are able to provide a loving home. Derek smirked when he saw the hint of anxiety on Meredith's face and Meredith looked at him „Don't laugh at me, Derek. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this."  
„Except Christopher. We have a one year old son and you protect him." Derek insisted and looked at the baby monitor „We can figure this out. One step at a time"  
„My mother was about as nurturing as a steak knife. He'll see that and we are two surgeons. We never have time." Meredith started to worry „I don't know anything about making lunches or Halloween costumes. Good moms make Halloween costumes."  
„Well, you can sew." Derek insisted. In fact she had one of the finest touches he had ever seen, her technique was flawless.  
„I sew skin." Meredith rolled her eyes. Derek had observed her every move ever since she had returned to SGMW. She had been on his Service, she had assisted on all of his surgeries and they had talked about the trial. The only time where he wasn't right next to her was at home.  
„Yeah. See? It's going to be fine. Here you go." Derek joked and handed Meredith a plate.  
„I missed you." Meredith admitted „I need a person I can talk to and you weren't around."  
„You are talking to Cristina." Derek said.  
„There are things I can't talk to with Cristina." Meredith insisted. She understood Cristina because Cristina was a lot like her mother: ambitious and gifted, but at the same time they were more attached to their work than her. She always wanted a family and this was something Cristina didn't understand and probably never would. In fact Cristina had questioned her choice of staying in Seattle.  
„There are?" he wondered.

„There are." Meredith nodded, but there were also things she couldn't talk about with him.

* * *

In the meantime, George prepared a cup of tea for his mother while Sofia was living in the living room. It was the first time she had come over to his condo since she had started treatment. She went in for one course of chemo and a leucocyte treatment the following day every third week. Afterwards she felt like she was going to die, but right now she was okay and walked around the apartment when she spotted the crib and the sleeping Baby „Who is this beautiful girl, Georgie?" she asked.  
„A friend's child." George said. He didn't intend to lie, but for his mother's sanity it was easier – and technically it wasn't a lie. Sofia was Callie's Baby and he had done nothing but provide his sperm.  
„You look comfortable with her." His mother said when she watched him feed her a little later „I'm looking forward to the day that I have a grandchild. I'll take her to the park and you are going to play with her on the swing and the slides and you and your wife are going to love that child. When you got married to Callie I was so much looking forward to finally looking after grandchildren and seeing you become an amazing dad, but I guess I won't get to see this."  
„Yeah, It's going to be a while." George mumbled. He got a little bit angry because his mother was talking like she was going to die even though her prognosis was relatively good. 95% of the patients with her type of Cancer survived the next 3 years.

„Georgie, we have to talk." She said.

„If this is about the money, I don't want to hear anything about it." George insisted. He had worked extra time at the ER to earn the money to pay for her treatment, but it wasn't nearly enough.

„George, you can't keep paying for my treatment." She insisted. She had seen the bills and all those rounds of chemo nearly equaled four years of med School tuition.

„I don't want you to die mom." George said „You need chemo and the insurance isn't waying for half of it."

„Georgie, you don't have to run yourself into debt." His mom insisted „I know what you make, you don't make enough to pay for all of it." His brother's were struggling to meet ends paying for their own bills. There was no way he could ask them.

„Dad died of cancer, don't you think I want my mom to live, don't you think I want you to be around when my kid starts walking?" George asked „I want you to be there for her first day of school. I lost one parent, I'm too young to lose the other one. This tumor has grown for 15 years and they missed it on every single mammogram you went to. It grew when dad got sick and nobody noticed it. I don't want you to die mom." Sofia had gone back to sleep. She was an easy baby.

„George, I lived a happy life, I'm old."

„You are not old enough to die, mom. You have so many things to live for." He insisted thinking Callie was going to kill me „This girl, she's a reason you have to survive, she's your granddaughter. It's Callie's child."

„I didn't know Callie was dating somebody again." She smiled.

„She isn't, well actually she is" he stuttered „but Sofia is my daughter too. We made her."

„that's wonderful Georgie. That's wonderful." George's mom hugged him. „That's wonderful news"

* * *

His hands touched her hips and his fingers wandered down her pants. For the first time in months he was trying to seduce her, but for some odd reason she couldn't give in to it. „Sorry Derek, I can't. I lost a baby and I'm not over losing it." She said. The OBGYN had told her to take things slowly and she wasn't sure how wild reconciliation sex would fit into this.

„We haven't lost Zola, we are going to get her back" he tried to encourage her. He had sensed that something was wrong, but he wasn't listening attentively enough to figure out what Meredith had just told him „We got a hearing date."

„That's right, we'll get her back" Meredith nodded. They wouldn't get Ellis back though and he didn't seem ready to hear about it. Elizabeth Grey Shepherd. That's what she had named the fetus she had lost. The possible future Derek had no clue of. Derek sensed that she needed space

„Do you want me to go?" Derek wondered „I could" He made his way to the door quickly.

„No, just sit here. I can't be with you, but I don't want you gone. I'll be fine if you just sit here. We'll be fine." Meredith said „I'm just not ready to have sex with you again -even though arguably this was the only thing that has always worked out between us."

* * *

The next morning Arizona had searched the entire apartment and her heart rate had elevated considerably. „Alex, have you seen Callie?" Arizona's voice on the other end of the line was nervous. Callie hadn't been home when Arizona had returned to their condo at the end of her night shift and Sofia was gone too. At first she hadn't worried, but after three hours without the slightest hint of where they might be she had started to call people to find out, but so far nobody knew where she might have went.

„Calm down, Arizona" Alex who had just finished a night and day double shift at the hospital insisted. „Callie's fine. She wouldn't put Sofia at risk."

„Would she? I don't know. I don't know what she's been doing lately" Arizona stuttered. „I mean I called Lexie, Teddy and Derek, I called Webber and I called…"

„Have you called George?" Alex wondered „He might know where she is." Arizona hung up and Alex went back to sleep.

„George, have you seen Callie and Sofia?" Arizona wondered.

„What do you mean?" George wondered „Sofia has been with me all day. Callie came over and left all of Sofia's stuff with me. She said that it was the right thing to do."

„So you don't know where Callie is?" Arizona wondered „Nobody's seen Callie and she left Sofia with you."

„What's the matter Arizona?" George wondered. „Do you think she might…?"

„I was concerned, but now I'm really really worried" Arizona mumbled. „I mean, she's not so stable and then she leaves our daughter with you in the middle of the night – it's crazy. What if she…"

„… she didn't" George tried to calm her down „Can I leave Sofia at daycare? I have a 24hour shift."

* * *

Lexie looked around. After a few months of barely talking to each other she had finaly managed to have the courage to talk to her dad again and he had invited her to come over for dinner. „You redecorated the hall, it looks… oh my got, you repainted the living room too… and all our pictures." Lexie was shocked when she entered the living room of her childhood home. The floral wall paper her mother had picked out when they had moved into the house shortly before Molly's birth was gone and had been replace by a modern beige. The different sized and shaped Frames with photos that had accounted for every Major Milestone of her childhood had vanished.

„We took them off…" a auburn haired woman in her late twenties interrupted her. She came from the kitchen and put a caraffe and three glasses on the new Mahagoni table. „Yeah, I felt like he had outgrown that stage in his life. This gives the room a whole new vitality"

„Outgrown his wife and daughters?" Lexie asked „Who are you?" She had never seen this woman before. Her father's Invitation to dinner had come as a surprise as she hadn't heard from him in quite a while.

„I'm Sam." The woman said „I'm so excited to meet you. I'm his…"

„Decorator I hope." Lexie muttered.

„Alexandra" her father said „she's my girlfriend."

Lexie starred at him for a second. „She's my age." She stuttered.

„I'm 26." Sam corrected her „You are only 23, aren't you?."

„Oh, that's Molly." Lexie said „I'm really as old as you are. This is gross"

„We put all of them into an album. We wanted you to have it…" Thatcher said „and we made one for Meredith too."

„Oh, yeah, the other daughter." Sam nodded „Yeah."

„The other daughter. You seem to know an awful lot about us." Lexie rolled her eyes. „She's older than you by the way. Am I supposed to take this with me or can I leave it in my room?"

„Oh, your room is Sam's art studio now." Thatcher said „I guess you have to take it back to…"

„She moved in." Lexie wondered what had happened here while she had been busy at the Hospital „You know this girl for what, two weeks and you let her move in."

„We met at grief group. A year ago." Sam said.

„Who did you lose, your puppy dog?" Lexie wondered.

„You don't understand. I really, really like…" Sam tried to appease Lexie.

„No, you don't understand…" Lexie interrupted her „You just changed every little thing I loved about this house. The fireside is gone. Everything changed. This was my home and now it's just a place I used to know that looks completely different."

* * *

It was Meredith's first day off in a week. It was the first day where she hadn't seen or been close to Derek for 20 hours or more. When she was on his service he always kept her close; when they were driving home they took the same car; when he was in the OR she was in the OR and when he was sleeping in his bed, she had been awake and cuddled with Christopher. She had tried to get over losing the baby on her own, but everything at the house just reminded her of how happy they could have been. Instead of staying there she had decided to take Christopher to the play ground near the old house. Thatcher had taken her there quite a few times before Ellis had brought her to Boston.

She sat down and watched Christopher in the sand box when Derek sat down next to her. „We should do this more often" he said „Take the day off and spend time as a family."

„What are you doing here?" Meredith wondered.

„I pushed a few of my surgeries." Derek said „I figured you might wanted to talk and spend time with me."

„We spent time together and we did talk. You agreed when we decided to take things slow, but you've been following me ever since I got back." Meredith said. „Give me a break, please, I really need time."

„You were on my service last week." Derek said „and wasn't Boston enough space?"

„I was on your service because you requested me." Meredith insisted „and this is not about what happened in Boston"

„I was trying…" he said. She knew he had, but she needed time to heal, they needed time to heal and he didn't know that she saw the smile of their dead child in his eyes.

„To do what? Protect me from Richard, from doing something stupid? I'm not going to, but, Derek, can you go and stop hovering? I really need time to myself. I came back, but everything changed. There are new protocols, a more standardized care and there's us to work on and that's very hard if we are together 24/7." Meredith said „We'll be us again when this feels like home again. I left and within the blink of an eye everything changed. Just let me get used to this new reality."

She looked at Christopher who had built a sand castle. „Lexie told him how to build sand Castles while you were away" Derek smiled „He's quite the builder."

„Unless he's trying to eat the sand" Meredith giggled. „Stop it, Chris. You must not eat sand."

* * *

Callie walked down the halls of the hospital in her street clothes. After an extensive session with Dr. Wyatt she had stayed and slept in an on call room in the psyche wing. With her badge attached to her jeans nobody had bothered her. Even in psyche the on call room had been rather busy with nurses and residents coming in and out all night. She had almost forgotten what it was like to spend a night at the hospital as a normal person. „Callie, what are you doing here?" a woman asked. Callie had no clue which part of the hospital she was in and looked into the room she had been called from.

„Oh, my good, Mrs. O'Malley, what are you doing here?" she wondered. Walking in she realized where she was „I didn't know"

„I didn't know you were back at work." George's mother smiled.

„Oh, I'm not, I just needed someone I could talk to and I figured my therapist would be a good person." She said.

„You have a daughter, she's beautiful." The woman smiled.

Callie nodded „Do you mind if I sit down?"

„No, have a seat." Her former mother in law offered. „What's the matter with you?"

„I like girl. As in romantically- turns out I like girls as in women. I met the most amazing woman. We are going to get married and oh- I'm screwing all of this up." Callie paused „I.. I know this is a lot. I understand. If this is too much for you to handle – my own mother practically disowned me – so I understand. Oh my god, I'm making you cry"

„I know all of this, Callie." George's mother said.

„You know?" Callie muttered. She was surprised because George had promised her to Keep quiet.

„She's beautiful, Callie." She smiled.

„Yeah, but ever since she's here I never stop worrying." Callie said „And I don't feel sane because all I can think of is all the things that might kill her and all the things I cannot protect her from- and I think I'm going insane"

„Well Callie, let me tell you something: That's what being a parent is like. You never stop worrying." She said „and you are not going insane – you are a parent and it's perfectly natural to worry. You just have to learn to live with this."

„George never mentioned you…" Callie said. Her hair had fallen off and she was wearing a head scarf.

„I was diagnosed quite recently." She said.

„How do you live with it?" Callie wondered.

„I accepted that I had to live with it and George really stepped up." She looked at the chemo drip.

„Yeah, he did." Callie nodded. She was sure that she could trust him with her daughter.

„And you will step up too, once you are ready for it." His mother assured her „Callie, you've always been so wonderful – almost like the daughter I never knew I had."

* * *

After the encounter with her father's new girlfriend Lexie went to the one place she might feel better at. She sat by Susan's grave and watched the sun. Her mother had died of the hiccups and had been replaced by a bad version of -she didn't know. Whatever Sam was to her father- she didn't like it.

„It's not that I hate her, but I really really don't like her." She mumbled. She had taken the cat there one night and every time she visited the grave Lexie felt like someone listened „Dad was never supposed to find anybody, he was supposed to stay with you, you weren't supposed to get the hiccups and die." She missed her and she missed the feeling of coming back into her childhood home after a summer of med school or college. „Meredith came back, she and Derek are working on things."

* * *

Bailey walked up to Derek who was going through some charts. „What's the matter, Dr. Shepherd? I requested Meredith for my Service and you vetoed. This is a teaching Hospital, you cannot keep around your own personal resident."

„I don't know how to talk to her anymore" Derek said.

„You two don't know how to talk to each other?" Bailey said „You two don't know how to talk to each other and you Keep requesting her"

„Yeah, and ahm…" he mumbled.

„You two didn't have sex. You don't have to tell me, your face is telling me." Bailey concluded. „You look like Luke when he found out that Princess Leya…"

„I just feel like I'm losing her and I don't want to let go." He tried to explain.

„Because she doesn't want to have sex" Bailey jumped to the wrong conclusion

„I wasn't saying that she…" Derek said.

„She doesn't want to have sex otherwise you wouldn't be looking like a beaten pup." Bailey insisted. „Shepherd, she doesn't want to sleep with you after you two rarely talked to each other for three months. What's your problem?"

„She's… like… she's keeping something from me…" he said. „I can feel it, but I don't know what it is."

„Maybe because you've been suffocating that poor girl with your presence ever since she got back." Bailey suggested „She hasn't been on anybody's service but yours- and let me tell you- I need a capable resident."

„Are you saying that this isn't healthy?" he wondered.

„I'm saying that you might want to back off" Bailey said

„She wants to specialize in neuro" he said and reached for the file.

„She wants to save your marriage most of all, Dr. Shepherd. Relationships are like a train ride." Bailey said „Sometimes you are driving through a tunnell -but that doesn't mean you throw away the ticket and jump to the conclusion that the train isn't getting to where it's supposed to get. You just sit there and wait to see where the train is taking you- and the train is going to take you there all by itself until you are at the next stop. She came back Derek and now you have to work on your relationship. Just wait until she's ready, I'm sure she'll tell you when she's ready. Whatever it is. Don't push it -and let me have a capable resident for once."

* * *

Derek stood on the hospital roof and looked at the sunset when he noticed he wasn't alone. „What are you doing up here?" he wondered when he looked at Callie „Arizona has been looking for you. She's been worried. We've all been worried."

„I needed this." Callie said and pointed at the sun „Not to be me. I mean, one minute I'm okay and then I'm not -and I didn't feel like me for a Long time. I talked to Dr. Wyatt. For the first time I really talked to her. For the longest time after the accident I doubted that I could ever go back to being on the other side of the operating table again."

„You need to go back" Derek said „You trained all those years and … "

„I went to the Mt. Everest when I was in med School. I never thought I could do it and then before you reached the top – just before you reached it- it got so hard to breathe you felt like it was impossible to go on, impossible to reach the top." Callie interrupted him „I wanted to quit, but I pushed through."

„And now it feels difficult to push through because you feel like you you are suffocating." Derek nodded.

„Yeah, but I try to remember that feeling when I reached the top. It was absolutely amazing." Callie's face lit up „When you reach that stage where you feel like you can't breathe, you cannot hurry, you have to move even slower than before because if you move too quickly, you'll never make it. I never felt that high again until my first ortho surgery."

„Well, you might want to think about going back to work." Derek encouraged her „the Everest is a little harder to reach and you should tell Arizona where you are."

* * *

Meredith and George were both standing at the window and looked at Christopher and Sofia at daycare „Shh. Sofia is trying to sleep." George shushed Meredith.  
„So… So Callie just gave her to you?" Meredith asked to reconfirm the story she had been told by Alex.  
„She left her at my place and dropped off all her stuff" George nodded „Arizona doesn't even know where she is."  
„Your condo isn't big enough, why don't you move back into my mom's house?" Meredith said „They never repainted Chris' nursery."  
„With Lexie and all of Karev's girls? That's no place for a child." George laughed.  
„What's going on, George, with Callie?" Meredith wondered. „I should have called her."  
„She's working on things. Don't worry, Meredith. Sofia is fine. Arizona and I are looking after her." George smiled „and after Callie".  
„Okay." Meredith smiled.

„I told my mom Sofia is my daughter, I haven't told Callie I told her" George said.

„Oh" Meredith said. „Why would you tell your mom?"

„She has cancer." George said „She needed good News"

„Sucks. When did you find out?" Meredith wondered „Christ, everything changed while I was away."

„A couple of weeks ago, she hasn't been well in a while, but she." George explained. „They found cancer cells in her right breast."

„I'm there for you if you need to talk. I mean as it turns out, I'm back for good." Meredith said.

* * *

Meredith was rounding on her last few patients before her first General surgery since her return to Seattle when she saw Lexie. She was surprised to see her because as far as she was concerned Lexie was supposed to be having dinner with her dad. „You look like you need to cut." Meredith looked at her sister. „Want to tell me why?"

„Dad." Lexie blarred out „He repainted the whole house – or his new girlfriend did. You know she's my age."

„Well, I have a chole patient with Bailey, want to scrub in?" Meredith wondered and took Lexie to the scrub room with her. „I don't mind. I can share -and we can talk- talk about the million ways our dad has screwed up our lives. Lexie looked around and the surgery that was scheduled in the OR was in fact a general surgery procedure.

„Derek let go of you?" Lexie noted surprised. When Meredith had returned Alex had started to bet on how long Derek would glue her to his service. Lexie had been wrong all along saying he wouldn't do it, Cristina's predicition of three days had passed too, but it turned out that George had won the betting pool. „So no more laying awake at night?"

„Yeah. He's giving me the space I need" Meredith nodded. He had told him that she needed time in order to get passed this and he had let her go reluctantly. She had tried to sleep next to Christopher for the past week, but her dear son had given her a hard time because he wanted to fall asleep in her arms. „I asked him to and he said he understood. So, you are okay?"

„Yeah, I just need a new home." Lexie said „My own."

„And this guy needs two surgeons that aren't gossiping about their emotions." Bailey brushed and both followed her to get gloved.

* * *

 _I never truly felt home. Until I found you. You weren't trying to make me love you like all the others did. You were trying to make me love myself – that's the reason you are my home._

* * *

When Derek got home Meredith was already waiting for him in the living room. His tumor resection had taken longer than anticipated. „If you want to take it slowly, we will." Derek walked up behind Meredith who had looked for a bottle of coke in the fridge. He kissed her neck and whispered „We can take it very very slowly"

„Derek, we…" Meredith moved away. „Chris is looking at you"

„Daddy kissed mommy." The boy said and waved from the sofa.

„That's not what I meant." He smiled and showed her the item he had hid behind his back „I bought pizza, let's just eat pizza and talk. We started with alcohol and sex last time, so just let us start with junk food now."

„I love you, Derek Shepherd." Meredith giggled and grabbed the carton.

„Pizza" Christopher smiled. He had enherited Meredith's love for junk Food.

„You only like me because of the food" Derek bluffed and sat down next to her.

„And the hair" Meredith said and brushed her fingers through his hair and bit of a mouthful of his slice of Pizza. Even if it felt different, she knew they'd be fine again – once all the wounds had healed.


	40. Chapter 40

_Back from Sri Lanka with an incredible jetlag and trying to cope with a 35°C temperature drop. Wish I was back there again instead of back to work tomorrow! It was really amazing!_ _As promised you'll get another update today._

 _The next few chapters are going to be intense: Derek is going to find out about Meredith's miscarriage (he might react in a way you haven't thought he would), Lexie and George are going to take another shot at love and Richard's storyline is going to progress a little further. I hope you like it! Also Callie is on her way to being herself again after the accident... so lots to look forward to..._

* * *

 **Chapter 40**

 _Some things las_ _t forever:_ _Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest time, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there. But usually things don't last forever. We outgrow the pig tails and the rope jumping and even the endless days of school end one day. That's where the real problems begin. Sometimes we find people that help us along the way, they tell us to get back onto our bikes, they catch us if we fall. We are tested every day and it never stops._

„Crap! Crap! I hate my life." Lexie cursed when she dropped the retractor after the nurse had handed it to her. This was supposed to be her first solo surgery and she was nervous.  
Derek grinned. „How are you?" he wondered. Meredith had told him about Lexie's recent freak out following her visit at Thatcher's house.  
„Everything's okay." Lexie lied.  
„Doesn't look like it." Derek said. „What's the matter?"  
„Fine." Lexie said „I'm telling you this as your sister in law. The house used to be so busy all the time and now? Now it's only me. Izzie died, Alex is away in Africa, you and Meredith are living at a house in the woods, Callie has moved out and now it's just me in the house my father was living in with his ex wife and my ex boyfriend."  
„Get out!" Derek told her.  
„What?" Lexie looked at him in shock. „I thought I was…"  
„What I mean is, get out of the house. Meet people!" Derek interrupted her „Date people. Avery seems like a nice guy even though he got my wife a job on the other side of the country…"  
„I'm not going to date anyone because he's a nice guy." Lexie said and looked at Jackson.  
„You don't have to marry him. Just have a date, go out for dinner while I'm going to see how your sister and your nephew are doing." Derek said.

„Why me?" Jackson wondered from the other side of the table.

„You are single" Derek said.

„Yeah" he nodded. Jackson and Lexie exchanged a weird look. They had been fairly secretive about their first date because it had ended in an disaster „but why Jackson have you heard anything?"

„I didn't realize you two were a thing" Derek smirked.

„Oh, we are not." Jackson blarred out while Lexie muttered „Absolutely not." at the same time. „I mean we tried once and it ended in a complete disaster."

„Meredith and I ended in a disaster and we are still trying." Derek said „It's good now."

* * *

Meredith sat inside the resident lounge when she heard a knock on the door. She turned around and saw Derek with a brown paper bag. „Hey, I brought some food." He smiled and kissed her cheek.

„Thanks" she smiled and kissed him back while he sat down next to her „What are you doing here?"

„One of my surgeries went late and I remembered that you are on call tonight." He smiled. He looked at the stack of books and Journal articles in front of her „What are you reading?"

„Test cases for the exam prep tomorrow and preparation for a whiple. Do you have any idea how stressful this exam is going to be?" Meredith asked him.

„I'm a board certified neuro surgeon. I think I know." Derek laughed. He still remembered Addison's frequent freak outs. „Don't stress yourself. You haven't even picked a specialty yet. There's still time for a lot more freakouts"

„I don't stress out. I'm calm in the storm." She smiled. „Have you found out why our samples don't progress past 10 weeks?"

„No, Dr. Springer and I looked at it, but we haven't gotten to a point where we know how to trigger growth after that." He said.

„I'd love to know why they never make it pass that stage." Meredith sighed and thought about their Baby that wasn't growing inside her any more.

„We are going to." He said with optimism „I heard Richard is teaching you."

„Yeah, Bailey is sick. It's…" Meredith paused „I don't know. I try to step on no toes and…"

„You are remarkably calm." Derek said. Meredith was calmer than he had thought -especially given Richard's Involvement in their current situation.

„I'm trying to rise above here." She said. „I'm trying to move on -plus he's an attending."

„I'm proud of you." Derek looked at her, watched her smile. „I'll drive home now and see how our son is doing."

„Tell him I love him and give him a big kiss." Meredith smiled.

* * *

Arizona and Callie were sitting at their kitchen counter. As Callie's recovery had progressed they had finally set a date and ordered invites. Callie had to Arizona's surprise chosen pink as their wedding colour. After she had addressed all the invitations for the people on her side, there were still a few invites left – spares they had ordered in case something went wrong. She looked at Callie's list while Callie was still writing. „Come on, you like her, last week you said you liked her and in some weird twisted way she's Sofia's grandmother." Arizona tried to push Callie.

„Nobody in my family is going to Show up. She'd be the only one." Callie said „My dad dreamed of this day since I was a little girl. It was his dream to walk me down the aisle and he still won't show up. Wouldn't it be weird if your ex-mother in law is the only family that shows up?"

„Callie, she loves you -and it's never wrong to have some spares." Arizona smiles „plus she has cancer."

„Why would cancer factor into her getting an invite?" Callie said „I mean it sucks, but let's just address all of these and get it over with. I never imagined wedding planning was a full time job." Callie insisted and put away the invitations to her family in a separate stack.

„I never realized you wanted a wedding that required a planner." Arizona teased her.

„I dreamt of this day ever since I can think." Callie said „You are perfect for me and I want this to be perfect for us."

* * *

Meredith looked at the patient she and Bailey had operated on the previous day. They had dissected the necrotic parts of her bowel following an accident she had been in. They had patched up the liver and spleen, but yesterday she had been too unstable to continue. „It's your call." Richard told her after she had checked the vitals, the incision wounds.

„What?" Meredith looked at her.

„You have to decide when you want to go back in" Richard said „Bailey isn't here and she was your patient."

„Are you serious? Residents never have to decide something like this" Meredith said. They were usually just along for the ride.

„Meredith, you are not a normal resident." Richard smiled.

„Dr. Webber, why?" Meredith looked at him.

„You can do it." Richard said. She had done more surgeries in the previous weeks anyway.

„No, this isn't something I should decide, this is something an experienced surgeon should decide." Meredith said. „I'm a resident."

„Meredith, breathe. You are her doctor. You've been in the OR with her before, I haven't. " he defended his decision „Look at his vitals and look at his history? What is your gut feeling about this?"

„We should go back in." Meredith said „She's stable enough to go back in."

„Book an OR." He said. „If that is your assessment, book an OR."

* * *

It had been a long night. The woman had gotten out of surgery alive, but Meredith was exhausted. In the OR it had seemed like Dr. Webber had done nothing but giving suction or clamping while she had done all the work. The procedures were clear to her, but it seemed unusual. She even ordered the nurses around and instructed the code team when they had to resucitate the patient. It had been a long night and she had barely slept for 30 minutes when Richard had paged her again. „You paged me?" she asked when she saw him and Jackson in the room she had been asked to come to.  
„Yes, I want you to do a biopsy on this patient. Internal medicine referred him. Just have a look at the chart and the scans and tell me what you see." He said.  
„Patient has been to India last months and came into the ER complaining about abdominal pain. His white blood cell count has been elevated and there was sanies in his urine. The ultrasound revealed an enlarged right kidney and the medulla of the right kidney hardly recognizable." Jackson summarized, but Richard kept looking at Meredith. „He was diagnosed with pyelitis and they started him on a course of antibiotics. Afterwards there were no bacteria in the blood, but in the urine, which is why he was taken for a CT. The CT revealed spherical swelling of the kidney and he was referred here for a biopsy."  
„Prep him, do the biopsy, and rush the results. Page me when they are here." Richard said „I'm going home. It's been a long night"

* * *

„Hey, why do you look like your dad just repainted your childhood home?" Lexie joked when he saw George in the changing room.

„There's this girl. Her mother is getting chemo when my mom is having it and we were waiting together and we talked. I asked her out and she said no." He said. He really liked her dark blonde straight hair and the fact that she never revealed anything about herself when they talked.

„Why? What did you say to her?" Lexie wondered. She knew that George was talented in screwing things up.

„Why do you make this about me?" George wondered „She told me she was too dark and twisty for me."

„Dark and twisty? She said the words?" Lexie asked in utter surprise."You love dark and twisty."

„She didn't phrase it like this." George admitted „She doesn't know I like dark and twisty."

„Why don't you tell her?" Lexie said.

* * *

The 2nd Prep class for the oral board exam that had been introduced to improve the teaching quality at Seattle Grace Mercy West was over and the residents looked like they had been beaten up.  
„This is like Guantanamo." Cristina said „plus I don't know if that 5th year resident who is doing the questioning knows half as much as I do about cardio"  
„Worse, the people there have rights since they revealed all that crab." Meredith joked „I prepared those cases for hours last night and they still managed to make me second guess my answers"  
„How are you supposed to stay calm if they interrogate you like this." Jackson wondered. „How are we going to survive two years of this?"  
„Relax. You need this." Callie said calmly. „The Oral Prep conference has to be that way because the exam is this way."  
„Are you serious?" Jackson wondered.  
„Yes. I've done 20 months of this and I'd be finished if I hadn't been in…" Callie swallowed the word. She refused to call it attack, but people always gave her crap if she called it an accident „You better get used to it!"  
„So what did MassGen say?" Cristina looked at Meredith. Meredith had called the residency coordinator to finalize the transfer back to Seattle Grace. The surgery time and the time in the lab she had done there was crazy now that she looked at the records. The letter of recommendation was full of praise.  
„Chief was sad to hear it – well especially after I mentioned the married to Derek bit." She smiled „He wished me the best for my future endeavors and hung up."  
„That guy is such a douche." Jackson said „Don't see what my grandpa sees in him. Is anybody up for a beer?"  
„Joes. 8pm sharp. I won't be there for long though. Child and husband you know." Meredith smiled.  
„Valve replacement. Sorry." Cristina declined.  
„I'm on call." George nodded.  
„Fine, see you Jackson." Meredith smiled „If you want more Information on what Lexie likes, I can tell you a lot"

* * *

The next day came and Bailey was still at home. Meredith and Cristina looked at the OR board. „I can't believe you are keeping so calm, it's like he's punishing me" Cristina complained. Owen was keeping her outside of the OR for as long as she didn't acknowledge the fact that he was her superior. During a trauma surgery Cristina had made a cut Owen had told her not to do.

„Be the better person." Meredith said „ – and I think he has a point, Cristina."

„He was my patient." Cristina said „Teddy and I fixed his heart ten month ago."

„Teddy had a Patient, and you two were in the OR treating a trauma patient…" Meredith tried to reason.

„When have you turned all wise and stuff?" Cristina wondered.

„I'm trying to see the bigger picture." Meredith said. She knew by now that some things just weren't worth fighting. She looked at her pager.

She ran as fast as she could, screamed so people got out of her way. „What's the matter?" she wondered when she finally got there. She looked at her crying child and the day care worker who failed to console him.  
„He started crying and he won't stop. He kept asking for you." Debbie said.  
„Chris, what's up sweetie?" she hugged him „Mommy is here."  
„No leaving" Christopher babbled under tears „Daddy no leaving"  
„I won't leave you -and Daddy won't leave you. Whatever happens, mommy is always going to be there. Mommy and daddy are going to pick you up when we finished work, pumkin." Meredith kissed him „We won't leave you. We love you. But I have to go now and pick up the results of a test because mommy needs to find out what she has to do to make her patient feel better" He had stopped to cry, but mumbled. „Mamy stay."  
„I can't honey. But I'll pick you up in 4 hours when I'm finished and you, daddy and I are going to drive home together." She said, but he started crying again. Meredith somehow blamed this on herself. Christopher had always been happy to stay in daycare until she had left.  
„I'm sorry, but I really have to go." She said as tears started to build up in her eyes. He was calm, but her pager went off and she had to go.  
„It's good if he sees that his mom is working." Debbie tried to make it easier for her.

* * *

George ran into Anna who had picked up her mother's blood results. She looked at him and when he tried to open his mouth, she said. „You ask me out and you look at me like we're the same age and we could have fun. And I might have made the same mistake if I were you, but we're not the same age; I'm about 100 years older than I look"

„Try me, maybe I'm into older women" he joked „If you are uncomfortable with a date, maybe you are comfortable with accidently grabbing a coffee round the same time. I'll be at the coffee cart at 9.00 am tomorrow." This was what Lexie had suggested him to do.

„Believe me, I'm bad news" was what she was going to say, but George interrupted her before she got to bad.

„I don't care, I want to get to know you" George said and walked away.

* * *

„Sorry, I had to take care of something and Christopher was crying in daycare today because he thought we abandoned him and I just thought it's my fault." Meredith said when she arrived at Derek's office hoping to get good news about their study.  
„It isn't, but I have a confession to make." He looked at her with guilty eyes.  
„What is it?" she asked nervously.  
„I have to go to New York next week." He said.  
„Are you serious? Our son has abandonment issues after the whole Boston thing -which is totally my fault. I'm not saying it's your fault, but can't you postpone it?" she wondered „Or is this like a family emergency. Your mom is okay, is she?"  
„No, I'm there for one surgery." He said „It's a day. I'm sorry. I'll leave on monday morning and I'll be back the morning after the surgery."  
„So we have to spend 4 days without you?" Meredith wondered „How am I going to deal with that one on my own."  
„I'm sorry." Derek said. „But you'll figure it out"  
„It's fine Derek." Meredith nodded „Say hello to your sister's husband for me."  
„You met him?" Derek wondered.  
„He interviewed me." Meredith said „and then told me I couldn't get the spot because you asked for a postion there."  
„You haven't mentioned my name, have you?" Derek wondered.  
„No, we talked about medicine." Meredith said „but he knew anyway and I didn't get the job because he said it wasn't a good idea to have you and me working at the same hospital"

„He never said a word." Derek said.

„Why would he?" Meredith wondered.

„That might have been because Mark called every hospital he could think of and told them not to hire a feisty blonde." Derek joked.

„He did?" she giggled.

„To cheer me up."

* * *

Meredith looked at Owen who somehow knew that she'd be at Joe's. „Dr. Grey?" he wondered.  
„Dr. Hunt, what's the matter?" she smiled and wondered why he wasn't saying Meredith.  
„Can I talk to you for a minute?" he wondered.  
„Sure. Let's go to Joe's. It's about Cristina, isn't it?" she wondered.  
„Yeah, do you know if Cristina has a problem? Did she talk to you?" he wondered.  
„No, she did. Well, I mean she does not, we talked." Meredith said „She'll come around."  
„Are you sure?" he wondered.  
„Yes. Maybe you should talk to her." Meredith smiled. Meredith looked at her phone. It was Joe. She wondered what was wrong with him.

„What's the matter, Joe?" she wondered.  
„He, he won't leave. I have his key and …" Joe said and pointed at Richard Webber. „He's pretty bubbly there and I know what this can do to his career." Owen and Meredith looked at each other.  
„I'll take care of it." Meredith said. „You go and leave, talk to Cristina, she's in the OR now, but I'm sure she'll be done in an hour"

* * *

In the meantime, Jackson was sitting in a scarely lit lab room. „What are you doing here, Jackson?" Lexie wondered when she came in.

„I'm practicing for a bone graft." He said.

„Which you haven't been scheduled for." Lexie said.

„Well, if I only did practice for what I was scheduled for I'd be at home drinking a beer." He said „I haven't been on the OR board in days. No attending wants to work with me. Dr. Shepherd only paged me to update him on that stupid post op patient of his who constantly treatens to sue the hospital."

„Well, in that case that's on them. You are an amazing surgeon. I mean Meredith and you came up with a way to dissect that Tumor from that girls liver." Lexie encouraged him.

„That was month ago, Lex. I have no specialty I feel increasingly passionate about" he said „I mean, I don't feel skilled enough for neuro surgery, I don't like kids and trauma, man that's a mess. Well, I found out what Webber is passionate about… he had a Club Soda with extra Club at Joes." He had left before Meredith had gotten there.

„You think he's drinking?" Lexie wondered.

„Well, it certainly would explain the increase of complications on his surgical record." Jackson said.

„You pulled his file?" Lexie looked at the files next to him.

„I pulled his file. He can't operate when he's drunk." Jackson said „He's damaging the reputation of this hospital if he does."

* * *

At Joe's Meredith tried her best to make Richard leave. She wanted to get home before Derek left the next morning. „Meredith! She's my star pupil. My little star. She'll be a brilliant surgeon. Brilliant! Just like her mother!" he said when she and Joe walked in „Get her a tequila and I'll have another club soda."  
„Let's get going, Dr. Webber." Joe insisted.  
„You know your mother was the most amazing surgeon I ever knew." He drunk talked „She was focused and she was intense and she was beautiful and…"  
„Dr. Webber, I will get you home now." Meredith said and they both lead him outside, she and Joe put him into the car.

* * *

Derek sat on a chair at daycare. He looked at Christopher who to his luck was asleep and had been asleep when they arrived at the hospital. „Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were here. I wanted to say goodbye to him. Mer is in surgery with Hunt so I couldn't say goodbye to her in person" Derek said when he saw Arizona. „She left the house in a hurry."

„I was taking measurements for Sofia's flower Girl Dress, my mom wants to make one." Arizona smiled „We sent out the invitations. You should get one soon."

„You'll be lucky if half the doctors you invited can make it." Derek joked „When Addison and I got married only Mark and Naomi made it in time."

„We figured that much." Arizona smiled. „So how are you and Meredith?"

„We are taking things slowly and she doesn't cry every time she sees a baby." He said.

„Oh I wish Callie was this far" Arizona said. Sofia was still at George's „But she is Meeting with Dr. Webber to discuss everything right now, so I guess she's trying like she promised to. What's Mredith's deal with baby's though?"

„Our self grown 10 week fetus brains keep dying." Derek said „I think that's getting to her. She's been really involved in this project"

* * *

Meredith had went to the hospital after being paged into an emergency surgery. After surgery she had checked on Christopher in daycare and had done a short consult on a premie with Arizona Robbins. Derek had dropped him off before he had left to go to the airport and she wanted to make sure that he was okay. She had been paged to a conference room to discuss the treatment of their kidney patient „Dr. Webber, I have the results of the biopsy for you. Looks like a fungal infection." She said.  
„What does this mean?" he questioned her.  
„Put him on amphotericin B and observe him." Meredith said. The margins weren't clear enough to know yet, she thought.  
„Refer him back to internal medicine. This isn't a surgical case." He insisted. Meredith and Jackson exchanged a look. They had both seen the condition Richard had been in the night before.  
„What about the kidney? I think we should monitor him. We might have to remove it and put him on the list for a transplant." Meredith insisted.  
„It takes years to learn when it's not necessary to cut." He asked „Are you crying?"  
„It's fine." Meredith indeed still have tears in her eyes after thinking about Christopher for a second „Are you sure he doesn't need surgery?"  
„Meredith, yes I am." He said.

„What she is asking you are you really really sure?" Jackson asked again „This doesn't look like…"

„Do you want to question my judgement Dr. Avery?" Richard asked and walked away.

* * *

In the meantime, George walked up and down the coffee cart looking at his watch. She was two minutes late and he was freaking out like a nervous teenager, but when the 5"8 tall girl walked up to him with two envelopes in her hand. „I'm surprised you came." He said after she had apologized for being late.

„I'm surprised I came." She giggled. „Typically guys don't Chat me up and actually turn up where they said they would -and I haven't been on a date in forever."

„Well, I turn up. Especially at the coffee cart. You wouldn't believe how many the average surgical residents spends on coffee." George tried to be funny.

„How much is it?" she wondered and started to ramble „I figure about 6 cups on a day, 10 to 15 on a night shift…I'd say you get at least one of those here and the rest on some Lounge… so" She paused and smiled as they looked at each other.

„Oh.. you were actually looking for a number…" George finally realized.

„Yeah, sorry, professional interest…" she smiled.

„What are you doing?" George wondered. They had never talked about anything personal so far -if a person's Profession was anything personal.

„Why don't you have a guess?" she smiled.

„I might be off, but I'm thinking barrista." He said.

„I worked as a barrista at college. But no." She said „but I had a lot of jobs in college."

„I'm lost here." George admitted „I mean, you don't read medical journals and you have the time to take your mom to chemo, so it's safe to assume you aren't a resident. You always wear blazers and officey stuff when your mom's treatment is in the morning, so I guess you work in an office."

„Well, I'm an accountant." She nodded. Today she was wearing a red blazer, a white shirt and jeans. „Not too bad, Dr. O'Malley."

„You are way too much fun to be an accountant." He said.

„I hide the dullness underneath all the awesome." She joked.

„Why did you chose to become an accountant?" George wondered.

Anna's phone vibrated and she looked at the message she had received. „Time is up, Dr. O'Malley, I guess we'll have to continue our conversation some other time." She said „Maybe you will grab a coffee tomorrow around 9.30am and accidently run into me again. I have to go now"

* * *

Adele Weber walked up to Meredith who was looking at blood results from her critical Trauma patient. „Are you and my husband having an affair?" Adele Webber wondered.  
„Excuse me." Meredith said. She was a little bit surprised to see Richard's wife at the Hospital. While she had visited him quite frequently during her first few years, Adele had stopped about a year ago.  
„I wanted to see your face when I ask you. Are you having an affair with my husband?" she asked again. „It's a sin, you have a little child, you should be home with your husband instead of spending every waken moment with mine. I know you are having an affair, Dr. Grey. Leave him alone, please. He's my husband. You are an adulterous…"  
„Ms Webber, I can assure you that we don't have an affair." Meredith said in a tone that was supposed reassuring „I brought him home last night because he couldn't drive by himself. He's been to a bar in case you are wondering."  
„He's been drinking?" Adele asked surprised and Meredith wondered where she had been last night.  
„He has." Meredith said, but Adele's reaction seemed strange.  
„That's what you've been doing to him." Adele yelled „How long have the two of you been doing this behind my back?" A few people noticed the noise and turned their heads.  
„Adele, what are you doing here?" Richard wondered.  
„Confronting your little mistress." Adele told Richard and turned to face Meredith again „Ellis, I begged you to stop."  
„I'm so sorry Meredith, you better go now." Richard told Meredith.

„No, you better go and deal with your problems." Meredith said and walked away.

* * *

Meredith walked and when she finally got to a supply closet, she opened the door and sat down. She pulled her phone out of her pocket „What's the matter?" Derek wondered.

„Adele Webber accused me of having an affair with her husband and I told internal that I wanted my patient back, but Richard overruled me." Meredith said. „and I swear I wasn't looking for trouble here."

„Are you?" Derek laughed and quickly added „I'm kidding."

„She called me Ellis." Meredith said.

„I talked to our lawyer about our hearing date." Derek changed the subject „He said we should name witnesses who tell the judge about us in the hearing."  
„What about Callie and Cristina?" Meredith wondered. „I mean Cristina knows me and…"  
„Callie?" Derek wondered.  
„Yeah, I did this huge thing for her. She should show a bit of gratitude and do this for us." Meredith said. „And maybe, maybe it's going to help her, maybe, she'll …George said she doesn't want to see Sofia."

„What's…" Derek said, but Meredith got paged and interrupted him. „Sorry, I got paged"

„What's the matter?" Derek wondered, but Meredith hung up.  
Meredith ran to the room Bailey had paged her to „He crashed and they send him down. The nurses said you worked on the patient before." Bailey said and received an envelope from a nervous intern.  
„Yeah. Dr. Webber told me to refer him back to internal medicine. He has a fungal infection in his kidney." Meredith said while Bailey pulled the films from the envelopes „If you look at the scans, you'll…"  
„See that we have to remove it immediately. Scrub in Grey, Avery" Bailey said.

* * *

 _In your darkest times, you just have to remember: You don't die if you fall into water; you die only if you stop swimming. You hope that the person that gets pulled out of the water is the one that fell in there, but most of the time we come back stronger because we know we can swim_ _._

* * *

Meredith drove home and noticed that the lights were switched on for a moment she was surprised. „What's wrong? Is everything okay? Why are you here?" Meredith wondered when she looked at Callie who was sitting on their porch.  
„I couldn't sleep. I-I couldn't be alone. I had to get out of that apartment. Look, you may not get it, 'cause, um, well, you're a mother and, um you love your kid. And you're-you're good, so you may not get it. But, um, you know, you know me, and you haven't tried to… I need a friend. I just-I need a friend who will let me sit and maybe drink and not talk about anything. Do you get that?" Callie cried. Tears were running down her cheeks.  
„I do. I get it. You want to feel close to Sofia. You want to hold her like she's your child and you can protect her, but ever since you were assaulted you know you can't protect her from everything." Meredith said. „It's a scary feeling to lay on that table with your insides exposed to the world. It's a scary feeling. You know that you are vulnerable and you are scared and knowing that you can't even protect yourself from things like that makes it hard to let Sofia in. I know you're trying and that's all you can do. It's all anyone can do."  
After they said on the porch for a while drinking tequila and not saying a word „Thanks." Callie said. Meredith bid her lips. „Can you do me a favor and tell what I did to get fired to the judge? I know it's an impossible thing I'm asking, but I think we need it."

„I think I need it." Callie said. „Horrible things happened and I have to talk about them to get through." Meredith wondered whether it would help her to tell Derek. They had been great for the past few days despite the fact that he still didn't attempt to get pass first base. He was taking Things very slowly indeed. She was still unsure whether she was ready to hit a home run, but she wanted to. She made a mental note to finally make the OB appointment she had been told to have in Boston. But even if she was cleared from a medical perspective, she knew they needed to talk, but if Callie managed to talk about it, she could.


	41. Chapter 41

_Thank you for all the reviews! Fourty hasn't been this big, but 41 is. Very big chapter ahead, I hope you enjoy it. It's a big step forward for a lot of relationships and things escalate quickly. You've been waiting for some of it way too long, so just enjoy and let me know if you liked it ;)_

* * *

 **Chapter 41**

 _Love. Neuroscience tells us it activates the same brain parts of the brain as habit forming addiction. It makes us feel like we can do anything, be anything, achieve anything. And once we taste it, we want more._

* * *

Friday morning and what could have been a quiet day quickly turned into a busy one. Lexie ran to the arriving ambulance. While they pushed the gurney into the ER, he continued to recite the words of a famous Shakespearean play. The EMT rolled his eyes and whispered „He's done this all the way to the hospital. Have fun with him!"

„She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being over my head, as is a winged Messenger of heaven unto th White-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-puffing Clouds and sails upon the bosom of air." He told and looked at the woman next to him.

„Oh, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy Name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet." A red head with long curled hair said.

„Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?" Lexie asked the patient as Jackson approached the bay in the ER.

„Why are you reciting Shakespeare?" he whispered into her ear.

„He's doing it ever since he has been admitted." She told him and they both looked at the woman who had been in the ambulance with him.

„Oh, we are actors. It was the last rehersal for Romeo and Juliet before he fell." She said and blushed. She was still in costume.

Lexie nodded and as she started to examine his lower abdomen, she continued to recite pieces of the infamous balcony scene. „tis but thy name that is my enemy: Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. I, be some other name. What's in a name?"

„How do you know this?" Jackson wondered.

„Photographic Memory and I played the Juliet in highschool." Lexie explained. „Can you help me turn him to the side?"

The patient looked in pain and starred at his colleague's lips while she told him „That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name, which is no part of thee, take all myself."

„This will hurt a little bit now, just stay calm" Jackson said when he put in a needle to draw some blood for the trauma panel and the crossmatch.

„Look at that, I think we have to page General and take him to the OR" Lexie said after she had looked at the monitor of the portable ultrasound.

„I take thee at thy word, call me but love, and I'll be new baptised, henceforth I never will be Romeo." The patient told the red head.

„We have to take you to the OR now, Sir" Jackson told the man.

* * *

Friday morning and a day off, the sun was shining when Meredith woke up. She got up, brushed her teeth, kissed Derek who was still asleep and went to Christopher's room. He was still asleep too, so she checked her phone. Cristina had left a few messages and she wanted to find out what she wanted to talk about.

„Yes, Cristina, I'm going today, I mean, we haven't had.. and I want to…" she said.

„Yeah, McDreamy and you have eye sex all the time it's disgusting…" Cristina laughed. „but you still haven't told him bout.."

„Well, I want to… I even dreamt about it. And it was so so so good." Meredith smiled.

„God, please don't orgasm in front of me." Cristina begged when Meredith noticed that Derek was up.

„Shut up, I have to hang up." She said and looked at Derek who was carrying a suitcase „What are you doing?"

„It's your first weekend off since you are back, I thought I'd book some tickets and take you somewhere special" he smiled. „We have to get to the airport."

„Isn't flying to New York for only three days a Little bit exessive." Meredith wondered. Derek had just returned from there a few days ago.

„Who said it was New York?" Derek smirked.

„So why don't you tell me where we are we going?" Meredith wondered while he went to pack some dresses for her.

„That's going to be a surprise – and it wouldn't be if I tell you" he smiled. „Trust me, it's going to be great."

* * *

Anna looked at George. She had already bought his favorite kind of coffee and was waiting for him in front of the coffee cart „Welcome to the fourth meeting of the club for people with screwed up lives." Anna greeted and handed over the coffee to him.

„You don't have a screwed up life. You have a job, you graduated from business school, you don't have a drug addiction." George said

„I was raised by nannies, neighbours and myself, I …" Anna looked at George and paused. She hadn't told him anything about her past yet, but he interrupted her and insisted „You should let go off the past."

„No I shouldn't, because it taught me this one wonderful lesson over and over again: If you are content and happy, live is going to hit you hard." She stated „My fiance died two months after graduation, and just two years after I had finally learned to live with that, mom got diagnosed with cancer and she's been struggling ever since. The only thing about my life that is giving me the strength to go on is Sophie."

„Don't say it's a dog." George said.

„I have a daughter. When Daniel died, I was five weeks pregnant and – I was working in New York at the time- Morgan Stanley, first hot shot job- everyone looked at me like -she's that girl that is pregnant -ruining her career- and lost the father of her child. So have I scared you off?"

„No, actually no, this is Sofia." George pulled out his wallet and showed her a picture of Sofia „She's mine. Mine and my ex-wifes and her fiancée's actually. It's all really messy and really complicated."

„You have an ex wife? You're full of surprises." Anna giggled.

„You were engaged." George said.

„I have a dead fiance, that's different." She insisted and looked at her coffee to avoid eye contact. „A part of me is always going to be engaged to him."

„Where's Sophie?" George wondered.

„With Daniel's parents right now. They are from Tacoma. We both were." She said and tears started to build up in her eyes „High school sweethearts and we both got into Harvard."

„You graduated from Harvard Business school?" George wondered.

„No, I didn't. Daniel did." She said „My dad got sick and instead of being a college freshman at an Ivy league school I went to evening classes at the local community college and worked to support myself and pay the down payments for my parents' house. I went to UCLA after he died."

„It's a good school." George nodded.

„I'm surprised you are still here. Most guys flee once I mention the dead fiance." Anna laughed.

„Well, I figure you are using him to scare off guys." George said.

„I wore my engagement ring for the first few months, but my mom told me to take it off and let go, and she was probably right." Anna looked at George „I'm still trying to let him go."

„Well, somethings are worth letting go off." George nodded „Thanks for this not-a-date. I'll take you out for dinner some time and if you want to we can split the cheque."

„I'd love that George." She nodded.

* * *

In the OR things were tense. Jackson and Lexie looked at each other as Richard walked into the room. Despite the fact that it was early in the morning, he looked tired and worn out, but they both knew that this patient needed their full attention. The bleeding in his abdominal cavity was severe and they had to locate the source of the bleeding. Twenty minutes into the surgery Jackson started to notice something. „Your hands are shaking." Jackson said and looked at Richard. It was the withdrawal kicking in.

„Come over Avery." Richard told him. They both knew that he couldn't continue.

„What do you want me to do?" Jackson wondered when he arrived at the other side of the table. Richard looked at both of them. „Grey, hold the clamp, Avery, you're in Charge now. I want you to take over for me."

„I've never even assisted on a case like this…" Jackson said and looked at Lexie who was holding clamps.

„Well, I guess you have to learn how to swim, my hands are failing me. So swim, Avery." Richard said and stepped back.

* * *

It was Callie's first day back at work. In the previous weeks she had only attended the resident training classes and conferences in order to ease back into work after the accident. „You paged?" Callie looked at Owen who was waiting in the ER for her.

„You are back. It's good you are back." Owen said.  
„Yeah, but they haven't cleared me for surgery yet. I still need physical therapy, but I can do consults." Callie said „But I'm excited."  
„There's a guy with a hand fracture. Look at his x-ray. Have fun." Owen said and handed over the file to her.

„Hello Mr. Smith. I'm Dr. Torres." She greeted the man who was in his late 50s.  
„Finally someone is taking care of it. Just get me a cast and I'll be fine." He said „I have to be back in court in two hours."  
„I had a look at your scans and unfortunately a cast isn't going to do it. To repair the damage and get your full hand function back you are going to need surgery." Callie said and showed him the xrays.  
„Are you going to perform the procedure?" he wondered „I mean, you could do it now, I don't have all day."  
„Oh, no, I'm only here for the consult." Callie said.

„So you are not qualified to do the procedure?" he wondered.

„I am" Callie paused „but I was attacked and badly injured and have been hospitalized for weeks and I'm not cleared for surgery yet."  
„You have a child?" he wondered.  
„Yes, Sofia, she was born prematurely at 24 weeks because I was assaulted and went into labour because I was in disstress after it. They had to deliver her to save me. I wasn't able to see her for weeks because I wasn't allowed to leave my bed and she was in the NICU. But a colleague went above and beyond risking her job for me and when I first held her it was amazing. It was amazing. Her heart started beating stronger and so did mine, it was really amazing. For a second I felt safe." Callie said. The first few seconds of Holding Sofia had been amazing.  
„It's the best you'll ever feel. Holding your child for the first time. I have 4. They are in college or grad school now. Time goes by so quickly." The man said.  
„I'm going to page someone and they'll get you up to a room so we can schedule the surgery for later today and one of the nurses is going to administer pain meds to ease the pain until surgery." Callie smiled. „You'll be fine"

* * *

Back in the OR Jackson tried everything to control the bleeding, but things got more and more out of hand. „What are you doing? I need help" Jackson yelled at Richard who was leaving the OR.

„Dr. Avery, his BPs dropping." One of the nurses said. The Alarms went off and Jackson looked at Lexie.

„Page Bailey. I need help in here." He told one of the nurses.

„What do you want me to do?" the nurse wondered. „Dr. Webber said you can handle it."

„I'm the lead surgeon and I'm telling you, page Bailey." Jackson yelled. „I need an extra set of hands and someone who has actually done this procedure before."

* * *

Meredith and Derek were driving to the Airport and Meredith was still trying to figure out where Derek was going to take them, she was going to miss her OB appointment for sure. „Mom told me you met her in New York." Derek smiled.  
„She did?" Meredith was taken by surprise.  
„Yes." Derek said „I was kind of surprised – given the circumstances. I didn't know where you were at the time. She didn't say much. She said that she was happy to see Christopher again and that the three of us should fly over some time.  
„I didn't know what to do. I couldn't take him with me and I… how did you think Chris ended up at Liz's?" Meredith stammered.

„Her husband is the coordinator of the resident programme" Derek said „She was happy to see you and honestly, I'm kind of happy that you chose to leave Christopher with her. I wouldn't have ever thought you would."  
„She was nice and she loves Christopher." Meredith said with a little hesitation.  
„And she was awfully interested in your health." Derek added „Is there something you are not telling me? Should I be concerned about you"

„So when are you going to tell me where we are going?" Meredith tried to change the subject. Derek's mother must have noticed something „You would have hired a babysitter for the wine County, so I'm thinking Mark."

„I guess you know me better than I thought." Derek nodded.

* * *

Bailey walked into Richard's office after surgery. She had never taken over a procedure for him in her entire career and she was genuinely concerned about him „What happened in there? What's the matter with you, Dr. Webber?"

„What are you talking about?" Richard wondered. There was a glass with eyes and a clear fluid in front of him

„You are refusing to help a resident, you leave him in the OR even though they are nowhere near qualified enough to handle the procedure." She told him „and your wife accusing Grey of sleeping with you and calling Meredith Ellis. What's the matter?"

„She's fine, we are fine" he dismissed her questions. „You don't have to worry about me."

„Are you? Because it doesn't seem like it." Bailey insisted „That wasn't a surgery a resident could have handled and you know that"

„Ellis would have." Dr. Webber said.

„Avery is not Ellis." Bailey said „and this is not appropiate for work." She took his glass and emptied the contents into the litter box.

* * *

In the meantime, Arizona tidied up her apartment when she found wedding invitations. They were adressed to Callie's family: her parents, her sister, her uncles and aunts and her grandmother. For a second she was mad, but then she picked up the phone.

„Lucia, It's Arizona, I'm Calliope's fianceé. We are going to get married. The RSVP date is next week, but Callie never send out your invitation because she was afraid you wouldn't be come." She said „So, I'm only going to tell you this once. If you want to be at your daughter's wedding, the wedding of the daughter you raised, the daughter who,"

„Arizona, don't get me wrong, but this isn't a wedding. This is…" Callie's mother interrupted her.

„I love your daughter and she loves me, shouldn't this be everything that matters? I'm sure Carlos would love to walk her down the aisle." Arizona tried to reason, but Callie's mother interrupter her and hung up. „You don't know my husband, so don't make any assumptions about what he wants to do."

* * *

Jackson and Lexie were grabbing a bite in the cafeteria „My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep, the more I give to thee, the more I have for both are infinite." Jackson told her when he sat down next to her.

She giggled „Why are you reciting Shakespeare now?"

Jackson smiled „It's embarrasing and I never told anybody, but I was Romeo in highschool and he keeps reciting Shakespeare and it's driving me insane."

„Maybe we shouldn't date in that case." Lexie suggested.

„Why?" Jackson wondered.

„for there never was a Story more woe than this of Juliet and her romeo" Lexie quoted.

„They don't make it." Jackson nodded.

„They don't even make it out alive." Lexie added.

„Our patient did though" Jackson said.

„Yeah, and his wife showed up." She added, Jackson looked at her in surprise as she continued to explain „Turns out she walked in on them when they were doing it and he tried to sneak out through the window."

„Tragic, and quite the Interpretation of the balcony scene, is it?" Jackson said flirtatious. „I mean imagine the person who loves you walks in on you having sex with your coworker."

* * *

Meredith sat outside on the deck of Addison's beach house. Her toes were touching the sand and she looked inside. She was thinking about a way to tell Derek about the miscarriage when Mark sat down next to her. They both looked at the sea for a while until he finally broke off the silence „How's your sister? SHe hasn't called me lately." He smiled.

„Acute signs of Thatcher Grey." Meredith suggested.

„What happened?" Mark wondered. Lexie had seemed at unease when she had called him the last time.

„He's dating a girl her age, which is…" Meredith started to explain, but he interrupted her.

„Hot." Mark blarred out.

Meredith looked at him. „I was going for weird, but…"

„That'd mean that he couldn't object if she was ever Dating somebody that was way older than her…" Mark smiled.

„Unless he's a hypocrite." Meredith added. She didn't know enough about her father to be the judge of that.

„So, what are you doing out here, big Grey? I thought Derek said you were back to normal." Mark wondered. They both knew that she wouldn't be out here on her own if they were completely fine.

„You are such a tight bunch… and whenever he's around Addison, he's this whole other person. A Person I know nothing about." Meredith tried to explain „And Naomi, Sam, … you guys have so much history."

„Well, he's himself when he's around you -and I guess he felt like he knows nothing about you whenever you are out with the gang." Mark said softly.

„What are you still doing here?" Meredith wanted to know.

„Co parenting. I know it's not healthy, but I want to be a good dad, so when things are a little akward between me and Addison, that's a Price I'm willing to pay. So what's the matter with you? For real. The Grey I know can deal with smalltalk" Mark looked out „You look tense."

„I just haven't had sex in a really really long time." Meredith admitted "I mean, he tried once, he tried and I told him no and now he isn't trying anymore and I'm afraid because…"

„You might have caught something in Boston" Mark teased her.

„No, god no, no," Meredith giggled, but her face turned grim. She held on to the bottle next to her

„No, so what is it?" Mark asked „You aren't pregnant, are you? I mean you are holding on to that bottle like it's a life jacket."

„I was pregnant -and I lost it." Meredith said „I can't tell him because I don't know how he'll react and things are so good between us. I don't want to cause him pain because I know how painful this has been for me"

* * *

„You called my mother, why would you call my mother?" Callie yelled. She had found the formerly hidden invites on the table.

„Because I know you want your family to be here, you deserve to have your family here" Arizona tried to explain.

„It's my family, Arizona -and if they don't show up, they aren't my family no more. I can deal with that, because family doesn't judge you for who you are and who you love. They just love you!" Callie insisted.

„That's what I tried to tell them" Arizona said.

„And what did she say? Did she say that she was wrong all along? I doubt it! I know her, I know her attitude! She won't change her mind and Aria won't change her mind either." Callie explained.

„Your dad might. He…" Arizona was interrupted by Callie. „Isn't invited to the wedding. I don't want him there."

„You would have wanted him to be there before all of it happened." Arizona said.

„But I can't go back to before all of this happened, can I?" Callie cried. „And I don't want to – because we were fighting and I need you Arizona. As long as you are there, I'll be fine! If you want me to feel better, kiss me!"

* * *

„Ay me! Sad hours seem long. Crap why do I keep doing this. I really have to go." Jackson cursed as he walked down the hall. When he arrived at the station and looked at his patients' charts, he noticed that the interns were gossiping about Webber and what had happened inside the OR and Lexie yelling at them, telling them to shut up and stop gossiping.

„Well, they aren't wrong." George told him „If he's drinking he's damaging the reputation of this hospital and he's a danger not only to himself, but also to his patients. Somebody has to tell them." Jackson knew all of this. When he had tried to confront Richard he had met him with a glass of Scotch on his table prattling „Avery, let me invite you and tell you something, you really should have stepped up in that OR." at him. He felt like he had stepped up though, he had admitted that he couldn't help the patient and had paged somebody who was able to.

„They shouldn't be gossiping." Lexie insisted „They don't know a single thing about what happened in there."

„I do and I'll make sure it never happens again" Jackson said and walked off.

* * *

„Mark said you wanted to see me." Addison said. „What's the matter?" She had given Meredith a tour of the practice, but she seemed oddly uninterested.

„You have to examine me." Meredith said and looked at the painting in Addison's office.

„Why? I haven't been your OB since I was on maternity leave." Addison seemed surprised.

„I was pregnant – when we met in Boston. I was pregnant and I lost it. Can you check me out?" Meredith asked when she and Addison had finally arrived at the practice. "I had an appointment with my OB in Seattle, but Derek took me away for the weekend"

„Does Derek know?" Addison wondered.

Meredith shook her head „and we haven't had sex since I came back. I was afraid something was going to happen and all I can think of right now is that I want to feel him inside of me again."

* * *

George looked at Anna. This wasn't the time her mother was in for chemo and this wasn't the day they had agreed to meet for their not-date either. „What are you doing here?" he wondered when he saw her in the hall.

„They brought in mom, she collapsed on the bathroom Floor. Sophie found her." Anna said and handed over a clipboard to a nurse.

„Is she okay?" George wondered.

„I don't know. They took her for a CT." Anna said and George asked the nurse for the notes on the case.

A blonde girl with wavy hair walked up to Anna and looked at her „Are you talking to the doctor, mommy?" the girl asked.

„No, kiddo. That's not grandma's doctor. He's just a friend." Anna told her and petted her head.

„George, that's Sophie." She smiled „Sophie, that's George."

„Hello. Are they going to find out what's wrong with my grandma?" the girl asked George.

„I'm sure they will." George tried to console her „Dr. Nelson is a very capable neurosurgeon."

Anna and George looked at each other. „I guess we have to go now, this young Lady has to go to bed." Anna said apologetic. „It's getting late"

„She can sleep at my place, it's just across the street -and you could stay here to check on your mom." George offered to Anna's surprise.

„I can't leave her on her own." She said.

„Well, in that case, you could stay at my apartment too and I'll tell neuro to page me once the scans are available." George said. „It might take a while anyway."

„Are you sure? I mean, I wouldn't want to…" Anna said. She didn't want to be a burden to him.

„… you are not…" George interrupted her.

„Thank you" she whispered and he handed her the keys.

* * *

„What are you doing out here?" Mark wondered when he saw Derek. Meredith and Addison had disappeared a while ago and Derek was looking at the sea.

„I called the lawyer. We have a hearing date!" he smiled. „They set a date for the hearing"

„Congratulations!" Mark said „But you don't look happy. Shouldn't you be happy about it?"

„You have no idea how much i love her, how much she makes me smile, how much I love talking to her" Derek said.

„What's the matter, Shep?" Mark asked.

„I knew something was wrong with her and I heard what you were talking about." He said „She hasn't told me and… she… I don't blame her. We were caught up in all this Boston and Renee drama- I feel like it's my fault and I want to make her feel better, but she doesn't need to know that I know. I just want to make sure she's okay. I'll just wait until she's ready to tell me"

„So what are you going to do?" Mark wondered.

„I'll make sure she's happy and I'll just wait until she's ready to tell me." Derek looked at Mark „What about you?"

„What about me?" he looked puzzled.

„What are you going to do?" Derek asked again and added a short explanation afterwards. „You broke up with Addison and I still see no rebound."

„I want to prove that I'm not that guy anymore." Mark said „There's somebody out there waiting for me and I need to know that I'm worthy of her love before I try anything."

„She must be a special girl." Derek said

„She is. Maria is and she is too." Mark nodded and they both starred into the sunset.

* * *

„Calliope, I love you and if you are not ready, you don't have to do it." Arizona said. It was the middle of the night and they were in a park.

„I wanna do it, Arizona." Callie smiled and looked around. „I wanna go back to where I was before the accident and I wanna see where it happened. I haven't been there since."

„Okay, let's go. Tell me something about that night." Arizona said. SHe knew what had happened, she knew that Callie had declined her offer to come with her and she knew that she had walked instead.

„I was walking, it was a normal night, surprisingly it wasn't raining, that's why I decided to walk in the first place." Callie said „We were fighting, I mean you were trying, but I was still mad at you, for leaving me."

„And you went this way." Arizona said.

„Yeah, I guess I did. It's a beautiful park, isn't it?"

„You'd never think that something like this happens here." Arizona said and looked around „I mean look at all those people." Arizona looked at Callie who had stopped and was looking at the pavement. „What's the matter?" Arizona wondered.

"I'm back. Here is where it happened." Callie said and looked up. „and I'm back. My family might hate me, but I have you. They might not be part of my story anymore, but that doesn't mean my story ends, it just means that their part in my story is ending. I could have died that night, but I'm not, I'm fine. Sometimes you just end up never speaking to someone who once meant the world to you again. That's okay. You cope and you survive. I survived and I can assure you that I can do this without my family because you are my family now. You and Sofia are my family now"

„Are you sure?" Arizona wondered.

„The moment my lips touched yours for the first time, I knew." Callie smiled and took Arizona's hand „I'll be fine."

* * *

„From my perspective, everything looks fine, If you want to, you could talk to Violet. It's never easy to lose a child." Addison said with little hesitation.

„What would you know about it?" Meredith wondered.

„I had a miscarriage. The summer before the divorce." Addison said „Derek doesn't know. I never told him, but I coldn't forgive him for not being with me when it happened- which is stupid because I was only at 5 weeks and in the middle of a C-section when it happens."

„I'm sorry." Meredith looked at Addison.

„It happens." Addison nodded. It happened to her patients countless times. „And you never stop wondering what would have happened to that child."

„I just don't know how to tell him. We are slowly rebuilding what we had." Meredith said „We still haven't heard back from the social worker about Zola, it's like this elephant in the room which we ignore right now because if we ignore it everything is fine, but then this miscarriage is like another elephant and the space gets smaller and smaller and it's getting harder to breathe."

„I know a thing or two about elephants in the room" Addison smiled. „They tend to grow, if you ignore them."

* * *

At the end of the day Jackson and Lexie were in the locker room together. It had been a long day for both of them.

„I told the board." Jackson said. „I told them about everything."

„About Webber?" Lexie wondered.

„Yeah, he… can't… he couldn't…" Jackson stuttered. They both looked to the ground in silence. They both knew what would follow, they were aware of the consequences. „Did our patient keep reciting Shakespeare or has the wife killed him yet?" he joked to fill the silence.

„We had to call security when the lover nd the wife met. But he's stable." Lexie said. „Bailey did a good job."

„I could listen to you reciting it for hours by the way." Jackson whispered into her ear and pushed her body against the locker.

„One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun/ Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun" Lexie replied playfully and turned around to face him.

Jackson moved his face closer to Lexie's „Let me kiss you." He whispered and their lips touched, their mouths opened and their tongues touched each other, while the person in the doorsill said „thus with a kiss I die"

Lexie and Jackson turned their heads and as he saw the Person, Jackson quickly moved away from Lexie „April, you are back!" Jackson said and looked at her. She was carrying a suitcase and looked like she hadn't been home yet.

„I'll just go now. I thought this was a good idea, but…" April turned around and left quickly.

Jackson looked at Lexie and hesitated for a second before he ran out of the door shouting „April, wait!"

* * *

 _The thing about love is, when it's good, it's so very good, and when it's bad, it hurts so much. And if you can't find a way to balance all those ups and down, it will make you crazy. But when love isn't madness, it's not love._

* * *

„Derek." Meredith looked at Derek who was holding a scarf in his hand. It wasn't cold in California and Meredith seemed to be a little puzzled as to why he was holding a scarf. He had smiled during the whole ride back to the hotel. He wanted to yell at her for not telling him about the miscarriage, but he tried to calm himself down, after all he had told Mark that he wanted her to be okay and he deep down knew that she had been trying to look out for their relationship when she had kept the miscarriage from him. While they were driving down the beach road he wondered whether it had been the night the hospital had tried to call him -maybe she had wanted him to be there.

„Meredith, I'm going to blindfold you and there's a little surprise waiting in the hotel room." Derek said when they had arrived in the car park. He had ordered all kinds of comfort food after he had eavesdropped on her conversation with Mark.

„Blind fold, really? Do you expect me to trust you?" Meredith teased.

„I can assure you that there'll be strawberry icecream -the nice one" Derek tried to sway her „and Mark is looking after Christopher, so there's just the two of us…and the judge is hearing our case in two weeks"

Meredith was delighted to hear that and she wanted to kiss him and get into that hotel room immediately.„… and we might take things slow." Derek whispered when he blindfolded her in the elevator. He took her hand and led her to the door.

„Really slow." She replied and kissed what she thought was his neck.

„Oh, I'd love to…take things slowly." He smiled „But I think we need the key card now" He reached into his wallet and unlocked the door. „Are you ready?"

„I'm not sure, depends on what you are planning to do." Meredith smiled and was anxiously awaiting the moment he would take off the scarf, but Derek just pressed his lips against hers and before she knew it they were on the bed, undressing themselves and one another. It was the kind of passionate fast speed sex that she had longed for in her dreams. Her hands had quickly opened the zipper on his jeans and he finally opened the knot on the scarf. „That's some surprise" she whispered.

„I didn't expect you to surprise me" he kissed her and looked at his undressed wife „What about taking it slowly?"

„Let's just take things as they come along." Meredith insisted „I've been waiting months for this and right now, I just want to have sex with my husband. -and ice cream afterwards". Derek nodded, he finally knew why she had been hesitated, he knew they'd be okay when his lips touched hers once again.


	42. Chapter 42

_Thank you guys for the reviews! As I said, there are some big chapters ahead and this is one of them... you'll see if Callie's and Arizona's love can stand the test of time when Callie is confronted with her accident again. George's storyline is going to move forward and Meredith and Derek are still trying to adapt to their new living situation, but a person from Derek's past is going to surface soon. Lexie and Jackson are still trying to figure out what they are to one another. So, have fun! I hope you enjoy the ride. There's a lot to celebrate in 43 and 44 ;)_

* * *

 **Chapter 4** 2

 _We've all heard the same. It's one of those things we learn in the seventh grade's science class. Adapt or die. Adapting isn't easy though. You have to fight your competition, defend of their attacks. And sometimes, you have to kill. You do what you need to do to survive._

George sat next to Anna in the oncology wing. She was looking at him and handed over a bottle of water to him. While George was waiting for his mother Anna just sat next to him. She had been in the hospital every day since her mother had collapsed in the bathroom and felt tired. "I'm going to Tacoma tomorrow" Anna smiled "Sophie needs a babysitter and I couldn't find anybody else, so I have to drop her off there. But I'll be there for our date, I'll take the afternoon train back into the city"

"Dr. Shepherd is going to operate on your mom" George encouraged her "He'll figure out a way to do it."

"He's good right?" she looked at him, but the concern on her face did not disappear. "He's trying"

"He's the best." George said. After he looked at his pager he got up. Owen wanted to see him.

* * *

In the meantime, Teddy, Cristina and Arizona talked about that news that had spread faster than any other. Richard Webber was not the Chief of surgery any longer. The board had issued a paper stating that he was relieved of his duties effective immediately.

"Who's Chief now?" Arizona inquired.

"Nobody" Cristina looked at the charts. While the attendings had been rather clueless about Richard's sharp decline in performance, it had been a topic for the residents quite some time "they are checking out if we can make it on our own." She joked.

"I wonder what happened, they wouldn't leave us without a Chief of surgery unless…" Teddy paused and looked at Derek who was walking down the hall with one of the board members.

* * *

Mer was tidying up the living room. She wanted the house to look fine because she was nervous and couldn't find a moment of peace. She sorted through a few medical journals when the house phone rang.

"Hello" she said.  
"Hello, I want to talk to Derek Shepherd." the woman on the other side demanded. Derek was still at the hospital.  
"Who am I talking to?" Meredith wondered. If she had a name, she could leave a message, but the woman hung up. Meredith tried to look up the number, but it had been blocked.

Two hours later it was time for Christopher to go to bed. The company of her son had been calming to Meredith, but she knew that a normal routine was important for a child his age. There had been too many shake ups lately. He was still dealing with abandonment issues and Meredith prayed that he would react positively on sharing his parents with another child "Christopher, it's time for bed." Meredith lifted Christopher up and put him into his bed. He got heavier and taller by the day.  
"No sleepy." The young boy said.  
„You have to sleep, dear. Tomorrow is a big day, mommy and daddy are going to see if we can get Zola back." Meredith smiled and kissed his cheek "Do you remember who Zola is?"  
„Yes. Girl" he nodded. Derek had told her that he had asked for Zola a lot while she had been away. He had thought that Meredith had left with Zola.

Derek walked into the room just this second. He smiled and walked up to her. "Meredith, when we go back to the hospital tomorrow, Richard won't be Chief." Derek whispered.

"What happened?" Meredith turned her head and looked at her husband.

"Someone told the …" Derek paused and Meredith looked at him. She knew that he knew more.

"Is that someone you?" she wondered.

"No, but they asked me whether I wanna fill in for him." Derek admitted.

"That's great, I guess." Meredith said and kissed her son good night.

* * *

It was early in the morning when Owen saw the alert. A train had derailed just outside of Seattle. Hundreds of commuters were supposed to be in there according to the news reports. He looked around and shouted "Kepner, O'Malley, move, move, page all available residents, there has been a train accident outside of town and they begin to airlift the victims here. I want three teams at the heli pad."

While he looked at the alerts that came in, he looked at April "You are in charge, Kepner. You tell the residents and interns what to do, you page the attendings, if you need a consult, you book an OR if you think that there's no time or a consult." The interns that had been assigned to the ER exchanged a nervous look.

"Three helicopters?" George wondered.  
"Yes, three helicopters, ten ambulances" Owen said "and that's only the number of alerts we got until now. Page all available doctors. Johnson, Hanley and Steward are on call. I need them and tell the nurses to prep all ORs and move all elective and non essential procedures back."  
"How many people are we expecting?" the next intern wondered.

"Full capacity -maybe more." Owen said. "Page everyone."

"We are going to be here all day" George nodded. He and April had already spent the entire night in the ER.  
"This will be amazing" April's eyes were glowing.

* * *

Jackson looked at Lexie. „I love that rush. The patient will be here in twenty minutes and we will get a lot of suturing and OR time. We are still on tonight, aren't we?" Jackson asked "I mean if we get to go."  
"What are you talking about?" Lexie wondered.  
"Our date. Restaurant, wine, good food, you, me." He looked at her.  
"We are not having sex." Lexie said "I don't want to rush it this time."  
"I didn't mention sex. I wasn't…" Jackson blushed while April looked at him from afar.  
"You are saying I'm not attractive?" Lexie teased him "Because I look very sexy if I don't wear scrubs."  
"I wouldn't dare to differ" he smiled "I'm saying that I usually don't sleep with people unless they want to."

* * *

In the meantime, Meredith walked up and down the hall. „I'm nervous." She stated and looked at Callie and Derek who were sitting on a bench in front of the court room where their hearing was supposed to take place.  
„Don't be. Everything is going to be fine." Derek got up and kissed her forehead.  
„What if the judge thinks I'm a horrible mom?" Meredith wondered. After all she had left her family.  
„He'd be wrong and he's not going to think that." Derek encouraged her "He's going to like you and we are going to get Zola back."  
„Cristina is not coming." Callie interrupted them "Train accident, she's stuck in the ER."  
"Dr. Shepherd, Ms. Shepherd." The lawyer that had represented Derek a few weeks ago greeted them with a handshake.  
„Dr. Grey" Meredith corrected him.  
„Pardon?" he asked.  
„I'm not Ms. Shepherd. I'm Dr. Grey." She insisted.  
„Oh, sorry. You brought your son?" he asked surprised.  
„He is suffering some separation anxiety at the minute." Meredith nodded. "He's crying in daycare and if I can help it I try to spend as much time as possible with him to ease it."  
„Fine. We should go inside."

* * *

"Great work Kepner. Keep it up." Owen complimented April when he looked around a well organized ER. The ER was swarmed, but things seemed organized.

April went over to Lexie and grabbed the chart. "Grey, Triage the Patient. Unless his injuries are life threatening, you move on to the next and let an intern do the rest. You'd know this if you would spend your time studying." She told her. Lexie rolled her eyes. Ever since April had seen her and Jackson, she had been a pain in the ass at work.

"Dr. Kepner, I lost my patient" an intern walked over and told April who's face went from determination to desperation in a matter of seconds.

"What do you mean, lost a patient?" she wondered.

"She was there one minute and asking for her mom and then she was gone" the intern said "I swear, I only turned around for…"

"What do I do now?" April interrupted him. She looked around the ER and suddenly the organization disappeared and she realized how unorganized everything was in there.

"Code Yellow, Dr. Hanley, have fun telling the nurse all about it" Lexie looked at April and went over to the admittance desk "You'd know the protocols here, if you wouldn't go Calamity Jane here"

"She was looking for her mom, maybe she found her." The intern stuttered.  
"Shut up and go looking for the girl" Lexie insisted. "Don't come back until you found her."

* * *

Callie looked at the judge „Mr. Smith. You are the judge?" she asked and they both exchanged a look.  
"What was that about?" Meredith looked at Derek questiongly.  
„Dr. Torres. Can you tell me something about Dr. Grey and Dr. Shepherd?" the judge asked Callie.  
"Meredith is an amazing mom. If she loves someone she's going to go above and beyond for them. She shows compassion for her patients and dedication to make her patients feel better not only in a medical way. She encouraged all her friends to wheel me through the hospital so I could see my daughter for the first time." Callie paused and looked at Meredith and Derek. "When Sofia was discharged and I wasn't me, my ex husband and Arizona took turns taking care of her. I think she'd be a wonderful mother to Zola."  
"I see" the judge nodded "Thank you. You are excused. Dr. Torres. I'm going to go back to my room now. Expect my ruling in 30 minutes."

After they had left the room, Meredith looked at Calli "How do you know him? He recognized you there."  
"He was my patient. I did a consult on him two weeks ago on my first day of work. Told him about the accident and everything." Callie tried to calm her down.  
"Is this good or bad?" Meredith asked nervously.  
"Good, definitely good." Callie encouraged her."They fixed his hand and he's back to work already."  
"Badass." Meredith smiled.

After a short recess the judge made his ruling. Everyone in the room looked at him while he said "You are granted permanent custody of Zola"  
Meredith looked at their lawyer "We got her back?"  
"Yes. A social worker is going to contact you and you get her back." The judge said.  
"We are having a baby." Meredith smiled. For the first time in weeks she felt truly happy.  
"We do." Derek nodded and kissed her "We have two beautiful babies."  
"It's going to be stressful. Very stressful." Meredith laughed.  
"and we are going to manage it" Derek hugged her "I'm a pretty amazing dad – and you haven't killed any of our children either."  
For a moment they exchanged a look that made Meredith question whether Derek knew. "I love you." She smiled softly. He had to know, she thought and for a second the thought of being responsible for the miscarriage returned and her eyes filled with tears  
"I love you." He said.  
"We have to get back to the hospital. I keep getting paged." Callie interrupted them.  
"So do I" Derek looked at his pager "we better go."

* * *

Patient after patient came in and one was like the other. They had to assess the injuries and unless they had sustained serious trauma, they moved on to the next patient and left the rest to the interns and 2nd year residents. George looked at the patient on the gurney. He starred at the girl. She was blonde and had green eyes. He knew the girl, she had told him that she'd have to take the train to Tacoma to drop off her daughter. It was Anna. George looked at her and remembered the scener when they had brought in Callie. Anna was still conscious, her eyes were moving around the room.

"Anna can you hear me, press my Hand, if you can hear me." George asked her.

"George, I think her reaction is fine, she just can't hear you, look at her eyes." April pointed out.

"Yeah, Don't move, Anna" George kissed her forehead "you'll be fine."

"Isn't that?" Lexie looked at George "You said she had a daughter, where's she?"

"She's staying with her grandparents for the weekend. She's fine." George said.

"Look at that" April said and showed Lexie the picture of the mobile ultrasound "Page Hunt and Torres, we have to get her into an OR -and you are going to step back now, George."

"I'll call her Family and tell them how she's doing." Steward said.

"Let's get her to an OR" Bailey said "Stewards, I need Torres"  
"Page somebody else from ortho, Callie is in no condition to operate." George looked at the intern while pushing the gurney to the elevator. "She cannot deal with something like this yet."  
"Where do you think you are going, O'Malley?" Bailey wondered.  
"She's having surgery." George said.  
"Yeah, and you are her boyfriend, not her surgeon." Bailey insisted "So, step away from that gurney and take care of somebody else."

* * *

"Hey, we just got back." Meredith said while walking up to Owen "What do you want me to do?"  
"Grey, there's an ambulance coming in 4 minutes. Patient is yours. And congratulations. I heard."he smiled. "Callie, you are with Grey"  
"Thank you, Dr. Hunt." Meredith smiled.

"23 year old female, head on collision. Fluid in the abdomen, went into v fid twice on the way here." The ENT summarized.

"She's pregnant" Callie stuttered and froze when she saw the extend of the injuries.  
"Page OB" Hunt yelled at the intern who kept starring at her.  
"Christ, she's pretty banged up." The intern stuttered.  
"Christ. Oh my god. Get her to an OR straight away. Page OB for Christ's sake. We have to get her stabilized and locate the bleeding. The abdomen is rigid. And page neuro. Now, go go go, hurry." Meredith yelled.

"Callie, are you okay? Callie?" George who stood close by and noticed the fading of expression on her face asked. Callie started to cry which drew Arizona's attention to the scene.

"Leave her alone, don't you have patients of your own?" Arizona told George "Callie, it's okay. Callie. Is it okay."

"There's blood, she's bleeding, she's bleeding like I was. She's…" Callie cried and her breathing got more and more rapid.

"She's hyperventilating. Do something." George looked at Arizona. Callie was living through her worst nightmare again and there was nothing any of them could do.

* * *

„Look at her. She's going to need multiple surgeries to reconstruct her face." Meredith noted when they finished the surgery.  
"If she makes it through the night." Owen added.  
"Yeah, but she's stable for now. Can I call Dr. Sloan for a consult?" Meredith looked at Owen "He had tremendous results on a case like that during our intern year."  
"Sure, you can call him." Owen said "Reconstruction is not my area of expertise"  
"We got Zola back." Meredith smiled "and the social worker is going to drop her off in... oh god… in three hours."  
"Congratulations." Owen smiled "Do you think Cristina?"  
"If you are asking me if she wants to have children one day." Meredith paused "I don't know that. But I know what it's like to be raised by somebody who didn't want me. I was in the way of her career and I was aware of that. Don't push her into something. I have to make a phone call and collect my son from daycare."  
"Do you think we should go on a double date sometime?" Owen wondered  
"Have you talked to Cristina and Derek?" Meredith wondered  
"I'm asking you." He insisted.  
"I'm okay, if they are" Meredith said and put her gloves into the medical waste "and I really have to go."

* * *

When George walked into a supply closet he looked at a girl. She had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. Anna had said that Sophie looked just like Daniel, but he saw so much of her in Sophie. She must have been the girl all the interns had looked for. Sophie's clothes certainly looked like they were dirty. "Sophie, I thought you were with your grandparents" He said "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"You know my name." The girl stuttered. She was trepidant "We were on the train. I have to find her, but I don't know where to look." She tried to get up and leave the closet.

"You need to sit down, young lady and follow that light with your eyes." George said and pulled out the torch pen from his pocket  
"And again." He said after he had checked her right eye. "Thank you. Can you lift up both arms for me? All right, good Job. Now I'm going to check on your belly."

George was relived that she seemed fine. She was dehydrated, but had not sustained any serious injuries during the crash. Someone would have to monitor her throughout the night though. "Can I see mom now?" Sophie wondered.

Her mother was still in surgery. "She's …" George paused. Technically he wasn't supposed to share medically information with her. "I can't let you in there, but Anna said you liked my TV, so maybe you can cuddle yourself in and watch TV until you fall asleep, I'll call your grandparents."

April came into the room and looked at both of them. George got up and looked at her "She was a mild concussion, but she's fine. I'll take her home. I'm sure Anna would be okay with that"  
"I can't let you take her home." April insisted "You are not her guardian."  
"Please" Sophie begged "I'll be here first thing in the morning"

* * *

After spending the night moving between the OR and the ER Meredith had driven home as fast as they could. The social worker had called them to tell them that she'd drop off Zola.

"We made it home in time." Meredith said with a hint of relief when they unlocked the door and sat looked at the answering machine. No missed calls meant that she hadn't been here yet.  
„today is the day." Derek said.  
„It is. Today your little sister arrives." Meredith said knowing that their other baby girl would have arrived in just 3 months.  
„Girl stupid." Christopher suddenly said.  
„Don't say stupid, Christopher. It's not a nice word. You should not use it." Meredith told him. They heard a knock and the door and Meredith picked up Christopher who was still in his pyjamas.  
„I'll get that." Derek smiled and opened the door for Janet who has carrying Zola.  
"Here she is." Janet smiled.  
"Hello Zola, let's get you settled in." Derek told her and gave her a kiss on the cheek "Your room is waiting for you."  
"I hope I won't see you again because in that case I know everything is going fine." Janet smiled "But you have a lovely home."  
"You won't." Meredith nodded and looked at Christopher "Do you want to say hello to Zola, Christopher?  
"No." the boy told her and ran away.  
"Alright, maybe later." Meredith smiled and looked at Janet. "He'll get around"  
"I'm sure he will. It's an adjustment for everyone" Janet nodded "and it's hard for him to understand. It'll get easier.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" George looked at the girl he had met just the other day. She had been gone when he had woken up. The young girl was standing at the window to her mother's room.

"Is she going to die like my Daddy did?" Sophie turned her head away from her mother's body that was connected to multiple IVs, a vent and several monitors.

"No, no honey, she's just sleeping." George said and put his hand on her shoulders and whispered into her ear "She needs to sleep to get better. She's like sleeping beauty."

Sophie looked at George and said "You should kiss her.

"What?" George blushed.

"When sleeping beauty slept all it took was the kiss of a brave prince. You could be her prince." Sophie suggested "She needs a prince."

"It doesn't work that way." George said.

"How do you know?" Sophie wondered. "Are you God?" He wasn't, but he knew enough about medicine to know that her vitals were not nearly good enough to wake her up.

* * *

Friday was more quiet, no major catastrophe had happened and things had gotten more quiet around the hospital. The surplus from the ER had been dealt with and everyone was looking forward to going home after a long day and night. Bailey looked at a bunch of residents and interns who were peaking through the blinds of the conference room they had talked to Richard in. He had been sitting in there for hours while they had treated every patient that had come in after the train crash and people finally had time to breathe. April was working through some paper work. "What are you doing?" Jackson wondered when he approached the group.  
"He's been sitting in there for four hours now." Cristina said.  
"What happened? Why is he sitting there?" April wondered. "It's weird, isn't it?"  
"I wonder what he did." One of the interns said. Jackson knew, but didn't tell.  
"Don't you have patients to see?" Lexie asked the interns "All of you. Don't stay here and watch."  
"Grey is right, get away now." Bailey ordered them away.

* * *

"Wow, this place looks different." Arizona said when she walked into the surgical libabry.  
"Arizona, I'm surprised to see you here, well, unless you're my 2:15 consult, in which case, I'm glad you're finally dealing with your syphillis." George said with teary eyes.  
"Well, that's funny. You're a funny boy." Arizona snarked "Look, I need to talk to you about Callie."  
"Are you sure this is a good time?" George wondered "Anna is in a medically induced coma."  
"I didn't know." Arizona nodded "I wanted to apologize. Okay, I've been a little overprotective."  
"You mean territorial." George corrected her.  
"Whatever line you want to use is fine. I'm not here to argue with you." Arizona said "Callie went home and went back into the closet."  
"I told them not to page her, I told you when you brought her home from the hospital to her apartment, that it was a mistake. You try telling her what to do." George said.  
"I need your help." Arizona admitted.  
"I'll stop by this afternoon." George said "Anna needs me here."  
"Thank you." Arizona nodded and left.

* * *

On the way to the restaurant where they were going to meet Cristina and Owen Meredith felt guilty because they had left their kids at home "I don't think it's a good idea to go out for dinner. It's Zola's first Friday night with us." She told Derek who was driving through the rush hour traffic.  
"And she needs get used to the fact that we aren't around all the time." Derek smiled.  
"I feel Ellis Grey'ish." Meredith insisted.  
"Your mom wouldn't have ditched you for dinner, she would be in the OR." Derek smirked.  
"Doesn't change the fact that I'm not there to tuck her in." Meredith said. Truth be told, she would have rather spend the day in her pyjamas than in a fine dress.  
"You are a great mom and one night isn't going to change that."

"Hey everyone, sorry we are late. The babysitter needed a few instructions." Derek smiled "We took a peds resident hostage."  
"It's fine. We ordered a bottle of wine and here we are." Cristina greeted her. She was already slightly intoxicated.  
"Anyway, we are sorry." Meredith said while sitting down next to Owen.  
"How is Zola?" Owen wondered.  
"Fine. Christopher isn't too happy to have a sister, but I hope he'll come around." Derek smiled "We have to make him understand that we won't love him any less. Kathleen moved to the tree house when mom brought home Amy from the hospital."  
"He probably only gets used to it. It's a transitioning process." Owen tried to encourage both Meredith and Derek.  
"Or he'll never be the same and won't get used to it at all and thinks it was the wrong decision to bring in another family member." Cristina said and didn't stop looking at Owen while cutting her steak at the same time.  
"„Shut up and tell me what this is about?" Meredith looked at Cristina,  
"No. I just wanted to point out that it's not always the right decision to add new family member when someone is not ready." Cristina smiled.  
"Is there an underlying problem?" Derek wondered.  
"Yes." Owen said shortly and everyone at the table went silent.

After she had answered her phone, Meredith returned to the table. "I have to go. I need the car keys, Derek. "  
"Is it the hospital?" Derek wondered.  
"No, but I really have to go." Meredith excused herself from the table.  
"It's Richard, isn't it?" Derek wondered.  
"I can't tell you." Meredith said and looked at her pager again.  
"I'm your husband." Derek insisted and looked at her. His eyes were begging her to say something.  
"Fine, it's about Richard and I have to go now, I'll pick you up when I dealt with it." Meredith said and left the table. Whatever it was, Richard wanted to see her.

* * *

George kneed down in front of Callie while holding Sofia. She looked at him and said "You're looking at me like I have a crazy head. And I don't. I don't have a crazy head. I'm fine. Go back to work -or see your girlfriend or whatever."  
"You haven't been out of the house since your little flashback at work. You don't answer the door" George said "It's okay, Callie, you can have setbacks, but you have to get out of this closet."  
"I'm I'm fine" Callie repeated.  
"Callie, you are hiding here." George stuttered "You never want to hold the baby."  
"Well, give me the baby. George, give me the baby." Callie insisted and tried to take Sofia from him.  
"Callie, it's not that easy." George said.  
"Alright, George, you you you are understandably concerned because you're not sure of what's going on, so I'm going to explain it to you." Callie said and took a heavy breath "Ever since what happened I am suffering from panic attacks, sleeplessness, agoraphobia and fear all within the windows of behavior one expects from trauma victims according to my therapist. However, I I'm not cognitively altered, I am not taking drugs or showing inappropriate behaviors. I am aware of my physical and psychological condition, I know I look like crap and feel a normal amount of concern for my well-being. I display few signs of improvement, I can walk again but but I also display no signs of disintegration. I have the number of two therapists, the housekeeper is coming by, and the baby can fit in the closet with me. So believe me when I am telling you that I do not have a crazy head. Now I'm holding the baby. Go to work. We'll be fine."  
"Callie, you are not fine." George insisted "You're like Anna, she keeps saying she's fine, but she's not -and now she's in a medically induced come. She keeps telling me that she can deal with all of this, and I Keep pushing because sometimes if People push you, they want to help you."  
"Don't talk to me about pain George." Callie told George "You don't know anything about pain! You don't know anything about pain until you are staring at yourself in the mirror with tears Streaming down your face and you're begging yourself to hold on and be strong! That is pain! Leave me alone George!"

* * *

"I'm so sorry." Meredith said after she had sat down next to Richard.  
"It's not you who should feel sorry." Richard said and looked at the papers in front of him.

"Why have you called me?" Meredith wondered.

"I need you to tell me what I'm supposed to do." He said.  
"I am what?" Meredith wondered and for a moment they just sat next to each other. Meredith looked at the clock. The index of the clock was ticking and Meredith looked at it making a turn before she finally knew what to say. "You know that if my mom was still here, she'd totally kick your ass. I looked away, I let you do it. Every one let you do it. It was wrong, but you still have a second chance. You don't always get a second chance. So just sign the papers and go to rehab. They promised that your job is waiting for you."  
„Do you really think that?" Richard wondered "Is this the advice you would give me?"  
„Ellis would kick your ass if you quit now." Meredith said "I know that and I know that you are capable of coming back. I'll make sure that you get to meet her. I'll call her the day you are Chief again. Anyway, I have to go."  
When Meredith walked out, Bailey walked in and asked "What keeps you from signing?"  
"If I sign this now, I have to stop drinking and I have to admit that I am an alcoholic."he looked at his mentee.  
"Are you?" Bailey asked and looked at him.

* * *

The door of the supply closet opened itself and Callie had to close her eyes because it got too bright. "What are you doing?" Callie asked when Arizona sat down next to her and closed the supply closet door behind her.  
"I'm sitting next to you." Arizona smiled "I'm just sitting next to you."  
"Yeah, but you tried so hard to get me out of here." Callie looked confused. She had been in here since she had gotten home and both George and Arizona had tried to get her to come out.  
"And I was wrong. So for now I'm just going to be here and wait. I'll wait with you." Arizona put her head on Callie's shoulder "The RSVP date is tomorrow. Almost everyone RSVPed. I'll call the rest tomorrow"  
"You don't have to do this." Callie said.  
"But I want to, Callie." Arizona took Callie's hand "I love you!"  
"What if I don't ever learn to live with it?" Callie asked.  
"I'll still love you."

* * *

It was Saturday morning when Meredith and the entire family gathered in the kitchen. The sun was shining through the windows and the kids were ready to have breakfast. "Two are so much more work than one. You'd think that there are some economics of scale, but it's more like things are getting harder exponentionally." Meredith moaned after she had lifted Zola into her chair. "I wonder how my mother did it on her own."  
Derek looked at her and smiled, he said nothing and observed her every move. She was feeding Zola while making faces to entertain Christopher. "I wonder how anyone does it. I'm exhausted. If I go to work I'm tired. If I come home from work, I'm tired. I'm always tired. It's like I'm an intern again." He noded. Zola was munching apple mash and Christopher was playing with his Fruit Loops.  
"Feels like the first few weeks at work with Christopher." Meredith said.  
"It sort of does." He nodded. Everything had felt new and exciting back then and it still did.  
"Coffee?" he wondered.  
"Yeah. So brain tumor?" Meredith asked when she looked at the scans on their coffee table. The scans were infamous among all residents by now. It was a butterfly tumor that was almost impossible to resect.  
"Yeah. The daughter is in a coma, it's still on hold. Gives me time to work out a plan." Derek said. He had no clue how to do it.  
"I'm at the skills lab preparing Mark's procedure"  
"When is Mark coming over?" he wondered and looked at his phone for a second. Meredith saw him pressing the red button to decline the incoming call.  
"Don't you want to answer your phone?" Meredith wondered. She thought that it was the woman that had called a few days before again.  
"It's not important. Let it go to voicemail." Derek said.  
"It seems important, your phone kept ringing all day." Meredith insisted. She wondered who he was ignoring and she knew he was ignoring somebody because he went into the bed room immediately.

* * *

 _Adapt or die. As many times as we've heard it, the lesson doesn't get any easier. The problem is, we're human. We want more than just to survive. We want love, we want success. We want to be the best that we can be. So we fight like hell to get those things. Anything else feels... like death._

* * *

George sat by Anna's side. She had been in a medically induced coma for more than 48 hours now, but they had taken her off sedation. She looked peaceful and all of a sudden he noticed that her eye lids had started moving. The movement intensified and he started to examine her after paging Bailey and Callie.

When she opened her eyes, Anna freaked out for a second, her eyes widened as she didn't know where she was, but George's voice was calming to her "Sophie has been asking for you. Daniel's parents came in to check on you every day and your mom has been here too. So, If you can hear me, just say something."

"See, I told you I was a trainwreck. Ouch." Anna tried to say, but her rip fracture forced her to pause mid sentence.

"You were in an accident and they put you in a coma." George started to explain what kind of injuries she had sustained in the accident.

"And they let you sneak into my room and you've probably seen me naked." Anna teased him. She pointed at her throat.

"Well, a lot of People have, if that's what you are worried about." George said and handed her a glas of water "You had several fractures and multiple traumatic injuries. They had to remove your spleen. I'm glad you made it"

"She woke up" Callie ran into the room and looked at Anna "Welcome Back Miss Miller."

"You must be Callie." Anna said after looking at the orthopaedic surgeon "Sofia really does look like you."

"George talked about me?" Callie interrogated Anna.

"A Little." She nodded.

"You have a femur fracture and a tibia fracture and a few rib fractures. We can't get you mobilized any time soon, if that's what you were wondering." Callie said "I will come back to you tomorrow to explain the course of action."

"When can I see my daughter?" Anna looked at them.

"Any time you'd like." George smiled and touched her hand softly. "I'll call her grandparents and let them know that you woke up."

"How's mom?" Anna wondered. George and Callie exchanged a look. The tumor they had found was known to every person inside this hospital and a few neurosurgeons outside. If someone was going to remove it without killing the patient, the case would likely make it into the major journals. Derek had tried to figure out a way to do it ever since he had become Chief.


	43. Chapter 43

**Sorry for the long break, I was fairly occupied with making a living this week :P** But here's the next update, I really hope you enjoy it...

* * *

 **Chapter 4** 3

 _Biology determines much of the way we live. From the moment we're born we know how to breathe and eat. As we grow older, new instincts kick in. We become territorial, we seek shelter… And most important of all, we reproduce. Sometimes biology can turn on us though. Yeah, biology sucks sometimes._

Callie's face was in tears when Arizona came home from work. "Thank god, you are here. She's been crying, she's been crying and I…" Callie sobbed "I don't know what to do, I don't know. I'm … "  
"Calm down, Callie. I'll pick her up." Arizona looked at Sofia who was crying in her bed. The room looked like a mess. "Come to me, sweetie. Mommy is here! You don't have to be afraid, we are both here… yeah, that's it. I think we have to change your diaper because you are a little smelly."

When she came back into the living room, Callie was sitting on the couch. "You could have changed her diaper." Arizona said "She would have stopped"  
"Don't you think I want to, don't you think I want to be able to pick up my own child and change my own child's diaper without thinking if there's a fast way to kill it?" Callie screamed. She had tried to do it, but a panic attack had prevented her from doing it "Don't you think I just want to pick her up and love her and not feel like this. I want to, but right now I can't and I don't know what to do. I go to physical therapy, I train the motor function in my hands, in my feet, I go to my counseling sessions with Dr. Wyatt. I try. I try, but nothing I do is good enough because I still fail to feel like a normal human being."  
"You feel Callie, you are human" Arizona said. "and there'll be a point in time where you are going to feel like yourself again." Arizona hugged her and handed over a bowl of ice cream.

* * *

Derek's reign as Chief of surgery had lasted for a week so far. A few things had changed, but the normal day to day business went on like nothing had changed. Patients didn't care about who was Chief of surgery. All residents were standing in a lab, models of human brains in front of them. They were about fifty from first to fifth year and everyone was listening to April bitching about Lexie and Jackson having sex in the shower in their apartment. Alex looked at Jackson and told him "That chick really needs to get laid"

"I'd be happy if we could go back to discussing the patient here instead of talking about the downsides of your current living arrangements." Bailey said with a dismissing look on her face. "Doctor Shepherd is here to discuss something with you."  
"So you found a way to do it?" Cristina wondered. Ever since they had seen the scans everyone had been talking about the butterfly tumor in the brain of Anna's mother.  
"I have a few ideas." Derek nodded.  
"So we are going to be stuck in the lab for another two weeks poking needles into the dummy." Cristina wondered.  
"It seems like it. This tumor is beautiful. It's majestic, it needs special treatment and we'll find out just how special." Derek said.  
"What about the margins?" Alex wondered.  
"They should be rather clear after a few sessions of radition." Derek said.  
"The daughter agreed to it." April said.

* * *

In the meantime, Meredith was picking up Mark at the airport. "Dr. Sloan" she greeted him with a smile.  
"Dr. Grey, look at you. I leave for one minute and your husband is interim Chief." he chuckled.  
"Glad you are here, I have the patient's file with me." Meredith said after they had put his baggage in the back of the car.  
"You just love plastics. Admit it." He teased her and she smiled.  
"I saved her life, might as well make her look prettier as well." She replied and they both burst out into laughter.  
"Is that really you Dr. Grey? I miss the times when we were in the OR together during your intern year. Me flirting and you rambling and mumbling." Dr. Sloan said.  
"Shut up, you have a kid." Meredith looked at him.  
"And you have two, which I want to see again by the way." Mark smiled  
"How is Maria?" Meredith wonded.  
"Fine". Mark said while pulling out x-ray scans and holding them against the light. "Christ, how's she still alive?"  
"All her facial bones are scattered, I know. That's why I called you." Meredith said "Avery will be here to assist you the whole time you are here."  
"Avery? Thought it was you." Mark wondered.  
"I'm here to talk to you about the patient's history, but I'm not interested in plastics and Jackson asked me. I mean I scrubbed in on your last surgery. You should give someone else the opportunity." Meredith said.  
"What did he trade you for?" Mark wondered.  
"Dips on all of his surgeries for a months."Meredith smiled.  
"Like it. Avery is an idiot. But you're still scrubbing in." Mark insisted "So let's have a look at the patient."

* * *

After having checked on all his patient, George finally found a quiet moment to sneak into Anna's room. She had been in her ever since her accident. They had talked a lot. They had talked about the fear of being alone, of ending up alone, their mother's cancer and Dr. Shepherd's plans.  
"You agreed to the surgery?" George looked at the form on Anna's desk. "I thought we talked about it?"  
"It's her only chance." Anna said. "and you are not a neurosurgeon."  
"She has two years without it if you decide for radiation." George said. "It's too dangerous and you are too fragile."  
"No George, I'm not fragile. I lost my fiancé, I raised his child alone, I have a job that is paying the bill, I was in an accident, but I'm not fragile. I'm very capable of taking care of myself." Anna looked at George. She knew that she still wasn't allowed to stand or even sit up properly. "She has a few good weeks until the tumor invades whichever area it might decide to grow into next. Doctor Shepherd and I talked about it. He said he knows how to get it all out."  
George nodded and they both looked at each other. George knew that Anna was aware of the risks, he just didn't want her to take them for some reason "What about your surgery?" George wondered.  
"I can wait." Anna replied.  
"You shouldn't." George smiled "Callie can fix your leg and she needs to fix your leg."

"Why do you hesitate? I thought you said you wanted to do it was quickly as possible?" Anna wondered when she saw Derek coming into her room.  
"You are in surgery tomorrow." He noted. It came as a surprise to Anna that her surgery would have an impact on her mother's surgery.  
"You said the tumor was growing and we already waited a week. You should do the surgery, I know the risk." Anna said.  
"Are you sure you can deal with it?" Derek asked. "You wouldn't be able to say goodbye before she goes in."  
"Dr. Shepherd, I wouldn't have signed the consent forms if I wasn't." Anna said "I dealt with worse things and there's not a lot of saying goodbye now, is there?"  
"She might not wake up after surgery. Right now it's only a medically induced coma to protect her brain, if we do it she might not wake up " Derek said and Anna added "ever again"  
She looked at Derek "My fiancé died in a car accident. I held his hand while he bled out. I was fine and he died. This surgery is my mom's only chance- so I want you to take it."  
"Dr. O'Malley never mentioned your fiancé, I heard you have a daughter."  
"Sophie, she's four. She never met her daddy, but she has his eyes." Anna said "It's like looking at him every day. It's like a part of them is always going to be close to me."  
"George said you lost your father." Derek pointed out.  
"If by losing him you mean seeing him croak slowly from liver cancer after he drowned his liver in Scotch for the better part of my childhood, then yeah, I lost him." Anna said. For a second she thought of killing George for telling people about her past, but she continued her rant anyway. "I didn't go to Harvard because he got sick, I stayed, I worked two jobs and paid for my parents mortage, while my mom was ignoring the whole thing and kept trying to further her career."  
"I didn't want to…" Derek tried to calm her down.  
"You haven't. I learnt to talk about it. Just promise me that you are going to do your very best." Anna said "I… she needs a chance… we never spend a lot of time together because she was alsways so caught up in her career. She's been a great mom, she never made me believe that there was anything I couldn't do. I'd love the chance to get to know her. We spent so much time together since she got sick and I'd love to get to know her. So you have to do it."

* * *

"My patient's daughter is serius competition for you, Mer." Derek laughed after he got home.  
"George's girlfriend? I thought she was an accountant." Meredith said surprised.  
"Unstable childhood with mommy and daddy issues." He laughed  
"Did her father have a second new family he never told about his first. Did he leave?" Meredith wondered.  
"Yes, in more than one way." Derek said.  
"So, George's girlfriend is dark and twisty?" Meredith wondered.  
"I'd say so…" Derek said while trying to kiss her.  
"Can I scrub in?" Meredith asked.  
"You and Mark are going to fix a woman's face and Lexie and I are going to take out that tumor. I can't play favorites." Derek said. "But do you know what I can do, I can get your mind off that tumor."  
"Even though I'm not too sure I'd get the surgery if you would." Meredith pounted. "Why don't you tell me who's been calling you all week?"  
"Because it doesn't matter" Derek said.

* * *

Day 1

It was early in the morning, but Derek had already left to prepare for his big 16 hour tumor resection. Meredith was alone with the kids and tried to prepare breakfast for them and her. The door bell rang and Meredith wondered who might visit them at this hour of the day, but opened the door anyway. There was a dark haired woman who greeted her hesitantly. "Hello" she said.  
"Hello" Meredith looked at her.  
"Can I come in?" the woman wondered.  
"If you tell me who you are." Meredith blarred out.  
"Amelia. Amelia Shepherd." The woman said and Meredith's eyes widened. Amelia hadn't been on any family photos since starting college, she was Derek's only sister Meredith had not met yet.  
"Derek's lost sister." Meredith said and opened the door completely.  
"Yeah, that one", Amelia took her bags and walked in "I tried to call him, but he didn't answer and I think one time you answered the phone… well except you didn't really answer the phone. You hung up when I asked whether I could talk to Derek. So where do I put this?"  
"Of course. I don't want to come out as bland, but what are you doing here?" Meredith wondered.  
"It's Zola's birthday. Mom said it's Zola's birthday and I want to meet her and Christopher."Amelia said "I haven't seen him yet either because I was sort of busy being a resident. Neurosurgery- like Derek."

Meredith looked at Derek's sister who was sitting on their couch and didn't quite know what to do with her. There were two small kids whom needed changing and there was Derek's sister in the living room. "So how are you?" she wondered.  
"Great." Amelia wondered. "Finally passed my boards."  
"Who dat?" Christopher wondered when walked into the room in his pyjama.  
"I'm your aunt Amelia!" Amelia said.  
"Amela" the boy repeated with a smile.  
"You can call me Amy, you, Zola and your dad." Amelia whispered into his ears.  
"Can I leave the kids with you?" Meredith wondered "I was about to drive to the hospital and leave them at daycare."  
"Oh, I'm happy to help" Amelia said "Where's Derek?"  
"Taking Mark to I don't know where." Meredith said "the both have long surgeries today."  
"Mark Sloan was here?" Amelia wondered "Damn, I should have come sooner I haven't seen Mark in ages."

* * *

Callie walked into Anna's room and smiled. "So you are George's ex wife?" Anna asked Callie "You are a lot more beautiful than he ever described you."  
"Yeah, but I'm really qualified, I've had tremendous success in cases like yours." Callie said nervously. "If it's one thing I know how to do, it's how to fix bones."  
"Oh, I wasn't worried about that." Anna said. "He said you had an accident."  
"I don't really want to talk about that." Callie said.  
"I know it's hard." Anna explained "Daniel was hit by a truck. When he died and I found out I was pregnant it felt like I had been hit by a truck too. So if you want to talk about it with someone, you can always come by."  
Callie walked out, but stopped at the door and turned around "Do you see your dead fiancé when you look at your daughter?" she wondered.  
"Yeah, I see his smile and his eyes and - …" Anna said, but Callie interrupted her before she was able to continue. "Have you ever hated her for living – for being the one that survived- instead of him?"  
"I'll always hate that he isn't here." Anna said. She realized how awful she sounded, but she was in a hospital bed after surviving a train crash with twelve casualties, so nobody here had any right to pass judgement. "I hated him for dying. But she was born and I forgave him. Are you okay?"  
"I don't know. I mean, I see a shrink, but every time I talk to her I get a feeling that I get worse instead of better." Callie said. "I feel like I shouldn't feel the way I feel."  
"You can't help the way you feel." Anna said "and believe me, with all the pain I'm in, it hurts like hell before it gets better."  
"Someone is going to get you in 20 minutes." Callie said.

* * *

It was the middle of the night when Derek finally got out of surgery. "Damn!" Derek said when he disposed his surgical gloves in the medical waste.  
"What are you doing here? What's the matter?" Meredith who had watched the last hour of Derek's surgery from the gallery.  
"My first surgery as Chief and I lost her. She herniated on my able, I was almost done when her ICP went through the roof. There was no way." Derek looked at her "Now I have to tell her daughter that she .. "  
"I'm sorry." Meredith said.  
"There was nothing I could have done, it's just a bad start." Derek kicked the sink.  
"You got the tumor out and there was little to no hope to begin with."Meredith tried to cheer him up.  
"Anna said she was fine." Derek said.c"George said she was used to losing people. She lost everyone she ever loved -except for her daughter."

* * *

When he arrived at home, he noticed that Meredith grew quiet. "Your sister is here" Meredith blarred out when he pulled the car keys out of the lock.  
"Which one?" Derek wondered.  
"Amelia" Meredith said calmly.  
"Amelia? Where is she?" Derek wanted to know.  
"Having a tea party with Zola and Christopher or something. She said she would babysit them" Meredith said. "You look surprised."  
"You are messing with me. Did liz put you up to this?" Derek wondered.  
"Do I look like I'm messing with you?" Meredith asked "She asked me if she could babysit. I hope you bought everything for Zola's birthday party."  
"I did and the cake will be delivered at 2.30 pm tomorrow." Derek said.  
"Best husband ever. We should go home now Derek, there's nothing you can do for her now. You can find out what your sister is doing here and I can go and have a bubble bath."

* * *

Day 2

The party was in full swing when Lexie finally arrived. She walked up to Meredith who was looking at a gigantic birthday cake in the kitchen.  
"Is this another Shepherd sister next to Dr. Sloan?" Lexie wondered and pointed at Amelia.  
"Yes, Amelia. She showed up yesterday morning. Don't know why she's here and Derek is refusing to talk to her." Meredith explained while looking for a cake knife.  
"The cake looks so nice." Lexie said. Meredith rolled her eyes. There were 24 people in the living room and Derek had ordered a cake that would easily feed the entire hospital.  
"Are you going to help me with the singing?" Meredith wondered while Jackson approached the kitchen counter.  
"Who bought this cake? I never had a cake." Jackson said when he looked at the Lion King cake.  
"Neither did I, we should feel cheated." Meredith laughed.  
"Are you serious?" Lexie wondered.  
"Your dad obviously hasn't talked about my mom." Meredith noted "The last birthday party where I had cake was the last birthday party your dad organized for me."  
"Well, you lift up Zola to the cake, I light the candle and we start singing. People usually join in."

* * *

Before going to Zola's birthday party George wanted to check on Anna who had been out of surgery for a few hours. He had not heard of the outcome of her mother's surgery, so he was surprised when she reacted not as cheerful as he expected. "Are you okay? I heard your surgery went absolutely brilliant." He asked her.  
"I guess it did." Anna said with tears in her eyes. "Dr. Torres did a great job"  
"What's the matter?" George wondered.  
"Mom, they think she herniated. Her brain activity is…" she couldn't say it. Derek had told her that there was virtually no brain activity at all.  
"Shepherd" George started, but Anna interrupted him "did everything in his power. I know. Her healthcare directive states that she wants me to turn off the machines after 30 days, so if she hasn't woken up by then…"  
"Your eyes… " George insisted. He knew she had been crying.  
"I'm fine, George." She insisted.  
"You can fall apart… I'll be there for you!" George suggested and sat down next to her.  
"No George, I have Sophie, I lost my fiancé -now I'm losing my mother- and I don't get to fall apart -so please just go now." She looked at him with her green eyes.  
"Tell the nurse to page me if you need anything." George said and left.

* * *

Lexie was out on the deck on her own. She looked at all the people inside who celebrated the birthday girl with a few drinks here and there. "It's a nice party." Lexie said when Mark showed up next to her.  
"It is. Why are you out here?" Mark wondered. "It's too cold to stay out here without a jacket."  
"I needed time to think." Lexie looked at her bottle of beer. "How is L.A.?"  
"It's L.A. I just feel like I'm missing out on everything here." Mark said "I mean, since Addison and I broke up, everything is different."  
"You don't like it, do you?" Lexie wondered "You wouldn't have left her and now you feel abandoned. You could always come back to Seattle, but..."  
"I have Maria. We have Maria. I couldn't leave them." Mark said.  
"Yes. That's right. Maria." Lexie nodded.  
"So you and Avery?" Mark smirked.  
"Yeah. Jackson is nice. He's smart and talented, a gentleman and an Avery." Lexie said "He was there when I needed someone."  
"You deserve more than nice. You deserve someone like" Mark hesitated to voice what he wanted to say. Lexie was in a relationship.  
"you?" you she wondered when he chose to remain quiet. It was what he wanted to say.  
"No, someone like Derek. Derek is a good man." Mark nodded.  
"You are a good man." Lexie inisisted and took his hand. "I think you are and you don't even know it. You don't even realize it" Their faces moved closer to each other, but they were in plain eye sight of everyone inside.  
"We can't Lexie" Mark whispered.  
"Yeah, we better get inside" Lexie nodded.

* * *

Day 9

"Can I at least stay until I heard back from the other hospitals I applied to for my fellowship?" Amelia wondered.  
"What's going on?" Meredith looked at Derek and Amelia who were fighting in front of the kids in the kitchen  
"She has to go. She has to go now!" Derek shouted  
"What's going on Derek?" Meredith asked firmly, but calmly.  
"Why don't you let me show you?" Amelia asked in a begging voice.  
"You think I'm going to let you do to my patients what you did to my mustang? I don't think so." Derek yelled at her.  
"She's your sister and she finished her residency. She's board certified... I… you're being like this mm-hmm…. because she crashed your car a couple of years ago?" Meredith wondered "I totaled my mom's car. People make mistakes. Right."  
"When you totaled your mother's car, were you high on pain pills?" Derek wondered.  
"No. But, … never mind." Meredith looked at Amelia apologetically while Derek continued.  
"Did you steal your mother's prescription pad so you could feed your addiction?" Derek wondered.  
"I'm not on drugs" Amelia insisted "That was years ago."  
"Yeah, and then when she went home, she overdosed. She was dead for three minutes. I saved her. That's what she put my mother through after losing my father and raising five kids on her own, so, no, I don't trust her in my O.R." Derek looked at Meredith.  
"Derek, she got back. She decided to become a doctor, to save people. She deserves a chance. She graduated top of her class in Harvard. You should talk to her." Meredith tried to reconcile the two parties. "Don't make her pay for something she did 10 years ago. Your mom said she really put her life together."  
"You don't have to bother Meredith, I'll just leave" Amy said and left the house.

* * *

Day 10

Anna was reading a newspaper when George walked into the room and kissed her. He hadn't kissed her ever since she had been admitted as a patient. "Dating patients?" Anna teased him.  
"You are not my patient. In fact, you aren't anybody's patient anymore." George insisted "I came here to tell you that you are being discharged and I wanted to offer to drive you home. Sophie has been asking for you. Daniel's parents said they'd drop her off."  
"George, you are a nice guy."  
"Oh my god, you are calling quits"  
"I'm not, George! You are great! Spending time with you is great"  
"There's a but" George said.  
"But I have to do this on my own. When I'm going home I have to tell my daughter that her grandmother might never wake up again. She saw me in the ICU. I really think, I have to do this alone." Anna said "I have baggage. A lot of it."  
"And I'm a strong man" George said and lifted her off her feet. "I'll drive you home. I want you to get there safely."

* * *

 _Biology says that we are who we are from birth. That our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Our DNA doesn't account for all of us though. Life changes us. We develop new traits. Become less territorial. We stop competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse. We find ways to change our biology. The risk, of course is that we can change to much, to the point we don't recognize ourselves. Finding a way back can be difficult. There is no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God we'll get there._

* * *

Amelia had waited in front of hospital all night. She had sat on a bench and looked at Derek's car. After four hours he finally walked out. She got up and he sped up to get to his car quicker.  
"Okay, you know what, smart boy? You can pretend like we aren't related, but we are." Amelia yelled at Derek in front of the hospital.  
"What is it that you want from me, Amy?" Derek wondered.  
"Okay, can you imagine for a second that this is not all about you?" she wondered "I'm looking for fellowship opportunities and you are the go to guy, you are the only important guy in my life since dad died. I just thought…"  
"Don't make this about dad." He insisted.  
"We can't make it about anything! - You won't talk about dad." Amelia paused "- You won't talk about this."  
Derek sighed and looked at her. He sat down and she sat down next to him "We were in the back of the store. Dad had just given you two pennies, and you always hid them behind the counter in this big crack in the floorboards. You said you were saving them so you could buy a town. And then the two guys came in. We could hear them talking, but you weren't paying attention until dad yelled, and you looked up. They had already pulled the gun, they had already taken the money, but now they wanted the watch that mom gave him. He wouldn't give it up. There was a gunshot. You lunged forward."  
"I remember. I was trying to get to him, but I couldn't move." Amelia said.  
"That's because I was holding you so tight that you couldn't budge. I put one hand over your mouth so you wouldn't scream and wrapped the other one around you and just held on for dear life, prayed to God that you'd be quiet and you wouldn't say anything. You were so little." Derek said. "I think that's what I've always wanted all these years, is you just to stay little and quiet and safe. But you're not any of those things. You're loud and fearless, and it scares the crap out of me. - If I look at you I always remember leaning over your dead body. You were dead, Amelia. How can I look at you when all I see is your dead body on the floor, right in front of me."  
"I think from all mom told me Meredith is just as fearless." Amelia said "You can deal with her. Her friend Alex pulled her out of the water before she met you. She was dead for more than 3 minutes."  
"She didn't OD in front of me. I never saw her dead body." Derek said.  
"See, I'm thankful that you saved me, that I'm still alive. But I'm not thankful that you refuse to see me ever since it happened." Amelia said. "Liz, Nance and Kathy all got to see Christopher after he was born and here we are a year later and it's the first time I get to see him. I'm not that young girl anymore. I want to prove myself to you!"


	44. Chapter 44

_Sorry, I know it's been way too long, but I was in Rome last week and had a little writer's block for the rest of the week, so you had to wait a bit for this one. (down to the last 20 in this story). You'll start to see how challenging it's for Derek to handle being a dad, a husband, a brother and Chief and you'll see some real progress on a few others._

* * *

 **Chapter 44**

Don't be scared. I have no idea how many times I've said it. The intern stands over a patient with a scalpel or a needle or a clamp, afraid to make the first move. They're scared. They know what to do, but they just need that little push.

* * *

Day 19

Meredith and Derek lay in bed and starred at the ceiling. "Pity Amy starts working next week" Meredith giggled when they heard Christopher over the baby monitor.  
"She has been a great help" Derek nodded.  
"She'd be a good nanny. We could hire her and stay in bed all day." Meredith suggested with a smile.  
"I prefer it if she's a good neurosurgeon" Derek said "You wouldn't want to waste all the medical training".  
"Yeah, we can have sex in the living room again once she moved out" Meredith smiled "but the kids really like her."  
"She's always been good with kids." Derek nodded "Kathleen invited all of us for thanksgiving."  
"Don't we have patients to see?" Meredith wondered "I can't afford to lose a complete weekend."  
"That's what Amy said as well." Derek mumbled "I can't believe I have the same conversation twice. Maybe I should go and see them on my own. It's been a while since I saw them, but then again, I'm the Chief."  
"And the whole hospital would fall apart if it wasn't for you." Meredith rolled her eyes and laughed.

* * *

Arizona and George looked at Callie who was putting a wire on a fracture to stabilize it. "I don't get why Callie can be this wonderful to other kids but not her own" Arizona told George in an almost empty OR gallery. "because they are patients, I don't have to protect them; take your time"  
"She'll get there. I mean Anna got there." George said. Anna was wonderful with her daughter even though she had to live through a few traumas of her own.  
"Yeah, cause she's Callie and her parents RSVPed yes, so I hope they are coming." Callie whispered "and she told me to not invite them"  
"And you did anyway?" George wondered. "Are you clinically insane. Does Callie know?"  
"No and you are not going to tell her, she'd be mad at me." Arizona said.  
"Yeah, she'll be so much less mad if they show up at your wedding" George said and got up. "Tell her."

* * *

The ER was busy when April saw one of the EMTs bringing in a child "Female, 12, fell off the roof at school, looks like she fractured her radius and has abdominal injuries." He said and handed over a chart to her.  
"Okay, I got this." April nodded and turned to the red-haired girl "Hello, I'm Dr. Kepner. What's your name?"  
"Celia. My name is Celia." The girl said. Her head was in a cast.  
"Okay, Celia. We are going to take you up for a x-rays and CT and if you can tell me your parents contact details, I'll have someone call them." April said softly while beginning to examine the girl. She had seen injuries like this before. Even though she had usually dealt with gun shot wounds, she had seen this before.  
"No, don't call my dad. He can't know I'm here." The girl begged.  
"You have massive internal injuries, I need somebody I can talk to." April insisted.  
"Not my dad, please, don't call my dad." The girl begged evoking April's suspicion even further.  
"How long have you had those hematomas?" she wondered.  
"They are probably from the fall." The girl lied.  
"No, they look old, at least a week." April insisted , but the girl wouldn't tell her.  
"I don't know." The girl said.

* * *

"You are back and you missed the most amazing conference on socioeconomics and cost effectiveness. Two hours of my day were completely wasted" Meredith hugged Alex when she saw him in the hall.  
"You are back." Alex smiled and hugged her. "Why am I lucky?"  
"Don't do any unnecessary procedures and don't run any unnecessary labs and don't treat patients differently because you think they are poor or rich." Cristina summarized.  
"Seriously?" Alex wondered "They wasted a whole hour on that"  
"Yeah." Cristina rolled her eyes "Next week we are going to talk about government regulations. That's another snooze fest. But glad to have you back."  
"I didn't want to miss the wedding. I promised Arizona I'd be back." Alex nodded.  
"This place is not the same without you, Alex." Meredith smiled.  
"But the African babies are going to miss me." Alex laughed.  
"We missed you." Jackson said.

* * *

"I can't do this. I screwed up royally the last time." Callie ran up and down in the residents lounge.  
"Calm down, Callie. Look at me. Here's what I told Cristina." Meredith grabbed her and looked at Callie.  
"That worked out well." Callie laughed.  
"YOU CAN DO THIS! You are a strong woman and you are going to marry the woman you love! You might have screwed up the first time, but that was with George and George wasn't the right one for you. You got married for the wrong reasons and if you look into your heart now, you'll see it." Meredith smiled.  
"What if I don't see anything?" Callie said "This is stupid."  
"Breathe, close your eyes, think about the person you want to wake up next to." Meredith insisted "Breathe again, do you see Arizona?"  
"Yes." Callie smiled.  
"See, she's your one." Meredith smiled "This is the second time you do it, but this time it's the right one. You love each other and you love Sofia".  
"My parents hate me for it. My mom and my half sister refuse to come. My aunts and uncles told me I would rot in hell and the priest refuses to do the ceremony." Callie said "And I still can't look at my child. The child I wanted to have so badly I went through hormone therapy and IVF o my own and now I can't even look at her because everything I ever did was hurt her. I failed at protecting her."  
"But you love her, you love both of them and that's all that matters. This day is not about your family, it's about your love for Arizona and her love for you."  
"And they haven't found god yet." Bailey smiled "God is everywhere; you can get his blessing for this union anywhere."  
"Can you do the ceremony?" Callie and Meredith looked at Bailey.  
"Me?" Bailey wondered.  
"Yes, what you just said was beautiful and perfect and I couldn't have thought of a better thing to say Would you marry us?" Callie asked  
"Don't you want to ask Arizona?" Bailey smiled.  
"She'll love it." Callie smiled.

* * *

April had shown Alex the bruises she had documented in her patient's charts when she finally found the courage to confront the girl. "Have you ever read breakfast at tiffany's? " April wondered when she looked at the girl. She had tried to get her to talk for hours, but had not yet been courageous enough to try the direct approach.  
"No, why?" the girl looked at her with suspicion.  
"There's a quote: It's better to look at the sky than to live there. It's better to be alive than to be dead. You have your whole life ahead of you. One more year and you'll be out of high school." April smiled.  
Alex came in and looked at them. Alex said down on the girl's bed and lifted her chin up a little bit. "See, what Apes is trying to tell you here: you tried to kill yourself and by looking at your scans we have to question whether someone has harassed you before and you are trying this to find an out." "What we try to tell you is, there is an out." April nodded.  
"You can't tell my parents." The girl started crying "I tried to… you know."

* * *

Derek sat in his office when Mark walked in with Maria. "Back for the wedding?"  
"Back for the wedding. Feels like you are moving houses every time you travel with this little rugrat. Second time in two weeks. Crazy, isn't it?" Mark laughed.  
"Maria, how are you doing? Is daddy being nice to you?" Derek waved at the girl.  
"daddy good." The girl mumbled and waved back. She certainly had inherited Mark's charme, Derek thought.  
"See, she's smart." Mark noted proud "How is life treating you?"  
"Meredith, it's complicated. I don't spend enough time with her and the kids. It feels like it all fell into place and somehow I'm out of the picture. The paperwork is keeping me here all night and she's home alone with the kids -if Amy wasn't here I'd be dead – killed by Meredith. By now I think she forgot how I look without a mask or in my office. I thought I would get rid of all this crap, but Richard…"  
"They offered Chief to you?"  
"Yeah, and I'm going to start the next stage of my trial." "I'm just afraid that Meredith…"  
"Meredith… man, you can't be afraid of this all the time, you can't burry yourself in work. She talked to you about it, hasn't she?" he wondered "Have a little fun, do what I'm doing, loosen up. You have to go home to your wife. I know you and I know what happened with Addison and you can't do what you did to her to Meredith and the kids. You can't leave your kids -not with Amy."  
"Is that why you are still living with Addison?"  
"What are you talking about?" Mark wondered.  
"The look on your face. I know it." Derek said "I had it -when I walked in on her."  
"You don't know anything. We are trying, like you and Meredith did. What gets broken can be fixed."

* * *

Day 20

Everyone was waiting as Callie and Arizona were still getting ready. Addison, Mark and Alex waiting in church and started to make bets on whether they go through with it. They had been there before. Burke's and Yang's wedding had been a disaster.  
"50 Arizona freaked out and is back in Africa" Mark smirked and looked at Alex.  
"50 it's Torres" Alex smirked.  
"No, it's not Callie." Mark said "She's no quitter. So you can pay up now."  
"Will you two shut up!" Addison insisted. "There are delays in every wedding. Nobody's freaking out!"  
"20 Dr. Montgomery would freak out" Alex smirked and looked at Mark.  
"You can ask my ex husband, I was calm and quiet." Addison raised her eyebrow.  
"Hilarious! I was in the wedding party and Naomi told me all about all your 27 freak outs that day. You wanted to kill your mother for choosing a quadrangle wedding cake instead of a round one." Mark reminded her.  
"This time it would be different, this time I'd plan my own wedding." Addison smiled.

* * *

"Ready?" Meredith asked when she looked at Callie. They were already 15 minutes late and Meredith had a strange dejavu to Cristina's wedding to Burke which had taken place in the church just across the corner from the park they were at.  
"Yeah, I guess my family won't come even if we wait a little longer. I mean I never invited them and now I realize that I want my dad here" Callie rambled and Meredith peaked through the door after a short knock. It was George and a man in his 50s. Meredith nodded as she looked at George and opened the door. Callie kept rambling, but paused once she noticed that George had been accompanied by her father.  
"I wouldn't miss this for anything, Calliope, I dreamt about this moment ever since I held you in my arms for the first time" Carlos came in. Meredith looked surprised.  
"Daddy. Thank you!" Callie hugged him.  
"You look beautiful, my dear." Carlos told Callie. "Your mom wouldn't come, but I wanted to be here."  
"Ready?" Meredith wondered with a smile.  
"Yeah, tell them to start." Callie nodded.

* * *

"Why did you call in a psyche consult, Dr. Kepner?" Owen yelled at her.  
"I…uhmm… I… she needed one. She either tried to kill herself or she is harassed and assaulted on a regular basis. Either way I thought she needed one." She apologized to Owen and tried to justify the decision she had made as the girl's doctor.  
"April, this chart has no indication that she showed signs for …" he insisted.  
"Abuse? No it didn't, that's why it was right to call in psyche." Amelia interrupted them "she wanted to kill herself. I'm sure she did try to kill herself. Dr. Kepner asked me for my opinion"  
"You don't look like a psychiatrist. Who are you if I may ask?" Dr. Hunt looked at Amelia's name tag.  
"Dr. Shepherd." Amelia said confidently "Dr. Amelia Shepherd. I'm the neuro fellow the other Dr. Shepherd hired"  
"Well, as a neurosurgeon you certainly have no saying in this." Owen said and let her tag go.  
"My name is on the chart." Amelia insisted "I completed a general surgery residency and I .. I know when I see a patient that needs more help than to be sliced open."

* * *

The music finally started playing. It was a quartet of string instruments. As Meredith walked down the aisle as Callie's maid of honor she looked at Derek. Everyone else somehow disappeared -except their kids. Maria and Christopher walked down the aisle in a suit and a nice white dress with a pink ribbon. After the kids had walked down the aisle, Arizona followed them accompanied by her dad who was wearing his army uniform. As she reached the end of the aisle, where Bailey waited, two white doves were released into the air.  
Before Callie walked down the aisle, Sofia and Zola followed as flower girls, but as they couldn't walk yet, Arizona's cousin pulled them down the aisle in a handcart.  
"It is written that the greatest of all things- the most wonderful experience in the world- is love. Callie and Arizona, deep and nurturing love has entered into your lives and you have asked us to help you celebrate and affirm that love. We can call your love for one another a holy union, for wherever there is love, god abides there also. Callie and Arizona, you have honored us by inviting us to witness your commitment to each other in holy union May your love grow sure and strong and true in the days and years of your shared life together."

Bailey looked at Arizona and Callie. They had chosen to go with more standardized vows and had written a poem about their love instead. "In this moment before they exchange vows, Arizona and Callie would like to dedicate this poem to one another." She smiled and both brides got up.

"I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart" Arizona looked at Callie. The sun was shining, but the sycamore trees provided shade. Her face was glowing with joy – a joy she had not seen in a long time. It felt like every wound had healt for a second.  
"I'm never without it, anywhere I go you go, my dear" Callie added.  
"and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling" Arizona had to fight the tears in her eyes.  
"I fear no fate, for you are my fate, my sweet" Callie said the rehearsed verse.  
"I have no world, for beautiful you are my world, my true." Arizona finished.

George looked at Callie and handed over the rings to Bailey. "Please take each other's hand, face each other, and repeat after me:" she started and Callie and Arizona did so. Everyone was focused on their hands as Arizona took the first ring „I, Arizona, take you, Calliope, to be no other than yourself. Loving and trusting what I know of you, with respect to your integrity, and with faith in your love for me, through our time together, and in all that life may bring us, I accept you as my partner in life." After Callie had vowed to do the same thing, Bailey concluded the ceremony "By the authority of Life Itself (and the state of Washington), by the life that fills and surrounds us and that reaches toward another for fulfillment and to share deeply, And by the day given to us to live And by the cycle of seasons through which our lives must pass in change By the love of friends that honors and supports this loving relationship and By the hurts and pain through which your lives have passed alone, By the long and sometimes lonely struggle of our people for the freedom to love, And by the delight and hope you have found in each other I say that you are united in a covenant and I pronounce you partners in life."

* * *

"It was a beautiful ceremony." Meredith put Zola into her stroller.  
"How is she?" Addison said and pointed to Callie with her eyes.  
"Not good, she's struggling. She's trying to bond with Sofia, but it's not easy for her." Meredith looked at Addison.  
"I see." Addison nodded. "How are you and Derek? Have you told him?"  
"No, but we are better. We worked through it." Meredith said.  
"He was broken when he came to visit us while you had your job interviews." Addison explained "He called Mt. Sinai to ask the Chief whether he could have his old position back if you decided to take the position. He really wants to be with…"  
"Christopher. I know he told me." Meredith dismissed Addison comment, his sister's husband had told her "But we are fine now."  
"No, Meredith, he loves you. You can see it in his eyes and in his smiles, when he looks at you. He never felt that way about me. He loves you, more than he ever loved me. He fights for you." Addison insisted " So let's get the kids to bed and back to the party once the babysitter arrives."  
"He knew from the very beginning. He said I was like coming up for fresh air." Meredith nodded "How are you and Mark doing?"  
"Excuse me." Addison looked at Meredith like she had been caught in the act.  
"You hardly talked. Is something up?" Meredith was curious "Last time he was over he said you are civil around each other."  
"We are fine. We are good. Solid. Like a rock. Good." Addison stummered "Have you told him?"  
"I can't figure out how." Meredith admitted "We are great again and I don't want to ruin it."  
"You wouldn't ruin it Meredith. You lost a child, there are feelings that are associated with that loss that you need to address and you can't get closure unless you tell him" Addison smiled

* * *

"Excuse me Sir, what are you doing here?" April wanted to know.  
"I'm Celia's father." The man said "I want to see my daughter."  
"Well, social services and a psychologist are in there with her." April insisted. "I cannot let you near her right now."  
"You think I did this to her?" he asked.  
"Well, she showed signs of…" April stammered.  
"I'm her father, her mother killed herself when Celia was four. She was shizoprenic and … I never saw it coming… she was off her meds… and Celia saw it and she was with her for hours before I came home. Darla had slit her wrists and Celia has been lying in a puddle of blood next to her dead mom for hours when I got home." He said  
"and she's too young to remember and you probably never talked about it." Amelia added.  
"I don't want her to remember. I don't want her to have it. I don't want her to…" the dad tried to explain.  
Apeil nodded "Is there a chance she has been doing this to herself? I mean there are.."  
"I shouldn't have been working this much… I mean… I" he looked like he blamed himself "I have been working three jobs to support her."  
"It's okay, Sir." Alex looked at April.  
"I can't pay for this… I don't have insurance, I can't pay for the surgery, I can't pay for the therapy, I can't even pay for the meds. What am I supposed to do?" he stammered.  
"Why don't you worry about this later?" April tried to sit him down.  
"Dr. Kepner here did a good job on your daughter's internal injuries, I'm sure we can figure out everything else later." Amelia smiled.

* * *

Meredith and Derek looked at Callie's attempt to dance with her father after her first dance with Arizona "Remember when it was us up there?"  
"It's hard to imagine." Meredith nodded "It feels like a lifetime ago"  
"I'd do it again. Any time. I wouldn't hesitate. If a beautiful woman walked up to me, I'd still be willing to do the stupidest thing and have the guts to ask her whether this is a good place to hang out." He laughed "It was a corny line."  
"You wouldn't get married again?" Meredith looked at him.  
"I wouldn't buy ice cream the next morning." He laughed "I wouldn't let you get away for a minute. I love you, Meredith."  
"and I love you, Derek Christopher Shepherd." Meredith kissed Derek.  
"There's no one else that I'd rather spend my life with." Derek whispered.  
"Why don't we take the weekend off and drive to Napa. 48 uninterrupted hours. You, me and a hotel room." Meredith smiled "Like last time."  
"I don't want 48 uninterrupted hours Meredith, I want a lifetime. I know I'm working a lot at the minute, but I'd very much rather be with you, Mer. You know that, right?"  
"Yeah Derek" she said. Right this second she wanted to tell him, but a wedding wasn't the right place.  
"You know we need to talk about those things – tell each other those things." He said while Meredith looked at an ultra sound picture of Sofia that was part of Arizona's slideshow for Callie "Why are you looking at thsat picture like this?"  
"Oh, nothing Derek, nothing." Meredith swallowed "I love you and them so much."

* * *

Later a the party Lexie enjoyed herself, she was dancing, she was having fun.  
"Were you just checking out my ass?" Lexie wondered after she caught Mark's look when she returned from the bar.  
"Not the first time. Won't be the last." He nodded.  
"You really seem like the type of guy who screams his own name in bed." Lexie rolled her eyes.  
"Wanna find out?" Mark smirked.  
"You wish" Lexie said and joined Jackson and April.

* * *

Day 21

"Sorry I'm late. Christopher has been crying again." Meredith said when she caught up with Bailey. They were supposed to have met ten minutes ago, but Christopher had been crying when she had dropped him and Zola off at daycare.  
"So are you." Bailey nodded and looked at her watch  
"It's just getting to me and I feel like I'm not giving him enough love and that's why he is crying and with Zola there I don't want him to feel less loved." Meredith looked at Bailey.  
"Grey, relax. Tucker used to do it too. It's a normal stage. He'll outgrow it." Bailey said and handed over a few charts to her, "This is not your fault. But you're not with me today."  
"Why? I thought I would get to scrub in on the bowel repair." Meredith looked surprised.  
"Shepherd requested you." Bailey said.  
"I'm going to kill him." Meredith rolled her eyes. Derek had dared her he'd request her more often to spend more time together.  
"Not Derek" Bailey said "Little Shepherd."  
"Little Shepherd, seriously?" Meredith smirked "If Amelia hears that, she's going to kill you. Lexie hates 'little Grey'."  
"Bring her on. I have a reputation of being scary." Bailey said.  
"I know you do." Meredith nodded.  
"Let Derek do the drop off tomorrow." Bailey said before Meredith got a chance to leave "Let him do it."  
"I haven't seen him in days before the wedding. Ever since he took up that job, he's basically never leaving the hospital…" Meredith looked at Bailey. "I meant to tell him something for days and I never see him"

* * *

"You paged." Meredith looked at Amelia.  
"Yeah, I need an ally around here. Hunt hates me after I teamed up with Kepner and Derek – he doesn't trust me." Amelia rambled.  
"And you thought your brother's wife is the right choice for teaming up against your brother?" Meredith smiled and looked at Amelia who was wearing navy blue scrubs.  
"Well, I know you." Amelia smiled "and you need people around you which you trust in"  
"I beg to differ. You don't know about the dark and twisty." Meredith said "You only know the happy me."  
"Ever coiled an aneurysm?" Amelia asked and handed over the charts to her.  
"Assisted Derek a few times. Not really that spectacular." Meredith nodded.  
"We'll do three today. One of them is yours." Amelia tried to motivate Meredith to work with her.  
"Thank you." Meredith nodded.  
"See, it's not too bad working with your sister in law." Amelia smiled happily.  
"We'll see about that, Amelia." Meredith sighed.

"Why don't we start with the angiogram?" Amelia smiled.  
"The catheter is inserted into a vessel over the hip and other catheters are navigated through the blood vessels to the vessels of the brain and into the aneurysm. Coils are then packed into the aneurysm up to the point where it arises from the blood vessel, preventing blood flow from entering the aneurysm. Balloon remodeling involves temporarily placing a removable balloon adjacent to the aneurysm while coils are positioned in the aneurysm." Meredith said "I know, Derek taught me."

* * *

"You are working with Shepherd's sister today." Cristina said over lunch.  
"I am and it's awkward. She keeps talking to me like she knows me, like we are alike, first she's moving into the house like it's the most natural thing to do and now she's acting like my BFF at work." Meredith nodded and looked at Cristina.  
"In fairness, you took in everyone at the old house." Cristina said "It was like you had put up an add on craigslist."  
"Why did I convince him to let her work here?" Meredith wondered while going through her salad with a fork.  
"Because you have a secret love for all the Shepherds." Cristina laughed.  
"But she lets me coil an aneurysm, so at least it's not a bad day. So what are you up to?" Meredith looked at Cristina.  
"I'm avoiding Owen. He keeps bugging me." Cristina said without looking at Meredith  
"Why?" Meredith looked at Cristina.  
"Kids." Cristina said "He wants kids."  
"You haven't told him?" Meredith wondered.  
"It'd be like pulling the plug." Cristina admitted.  
"Sometimes you have to pull the plug to see if the patient can breathe for himself" Meredith said  
"Or show him the pictures of foetuses." Cristina knew that Meredith had not told Derek.  
"I can't." Meredith said.  
"Well, I can't either." Cristina looked at Meredith and got up.

* * *

"What are you doing up here?" Callie looked at Amelia.  
"I wanted to check on Zola's shunt." Amelia lied. She had tried to be friendly with Meredith, but as much as everyone else there was no getting through if she was with Cristina, so instead of spending the lunch break on her own, she hid at daycare.  
"I wanted to see her. I can't really see myself going trick or treating with them. It'd be scary" Callie smiled.  
"Scary like getting pushed in front of a car?" Amelia asked straightout.  
"Yeah." Callie nodded.  
"My dad got shot. I was five and before Halloween that year I sat down in the backyard with a box of fire crackers. I lit them and waited for them to explode. I wanted to run for the first few because it reminded me of that night in the store so much, but by twenty the sound was bearable. It still felt awful, but I also knew I was going to be fine, that who ever did this to me couldn't hurt me. Try it." Amelia rambled. "Plus you walked down the aisle which is a lot scarier than a few scary monsters. Sorry, oh my god, I talk to much. No filter-I know."  
"Oh no, it's fine. Thanks. Can you tell Meredith I will be there?" Callie smiled and got up

* * *

Day 23

Meredith was preparing the kids' lunches while Derek and Amelia were watching the kids. "Is she stay?" Christopher asked and looked at his father.  
"Yes, Christopher. She's your sister." Amelia smiled.  
"She no look like me." The boy said.  
"That's because we adopted her. She didn't have parents and we said we would take care of her like we take care of you and be her parents like we are your parents. We are going to love her like we love you. We love you." Derek smiled "She's your family."  
"We love you, Christopher." Amelia smiled. "Your mom loves you, and your grandmother thinks you walk on clouds."  
While they encouraged Christopher to be more open-minded towards his sister, Amelia noticed that Zola was trying to get up. "Do you want to help Zola walk? She's younger than you." Amelia looked at her nephew.  
"I do." The boy nodded.  
"Look at them. Just look at them." Derek said. "That used to be us."  
"He's taking her hand." Amelia nodded until she noticed that Christopher was trying to hard -like Derek had pulled her "… Don't pull her, Christopher!"  
"Needs to walk." Christopher insisted.  
"Yes, Christopher, but she needs time. She'll learn it, just be a little more patient." Amelia smiled "Careful, you wouldn't want to hurt her. Good job Zola, let's try again. Oh my god… do you see that.."  
Zola had gotten up again and now she and Christopher were walking hand in hand "They are walking." Derek smiled.

* * *

Meredith and Arizona carried the kids through the lobby when they ran into Alex "Why are Zola and Christopher wearing costumes?" he wondered.  
"It's Halloween. Children dress up for Halloween." Meredith said.  
"Ah, right, have been working so much lately, I forget those things. Like the date or what time of the year it is." Alex laughed "I probably look scary without face paint."  
"Anyway, the kids will go trick and treating from your house at 5.00 pm. So be there." Meredith smiled.  
"Can I bring anything?" Jackson wondered and both Meredith and Alex looked at them in surprise.  
"Why would you?" Alex asked.  
"Lexie obviously hasn't told you." Jackson sighed and looked at both their faces "Neither of you."  
"Hasn't told me what? Have you moved in?" Meredith asked in a tone that came out more harshly than she had intended it to be.  
"No he hasn't." Alex said.  
"No, not yet." Jackson said "I was about to. I wanted to bring most of my clothes tonight. But if you don't want to, …"  
"It's fine. I'm just a little surprised." Meredith said "Lexie hasn't told me"  
"So was I. So do you want me to bring anything? People bring sweets or something don't they?" Jackson asked and looked at Meredith  
"I never went trick or treating, how would I know?" Meredith said "Anyway, I have to go and find Amelia."

* * *

 _Don't stop. Don't hesitate. You can't be scared of what's next. Do not let fear get in your way. That's why we don't operate alone. There are attendings and nurses and interns. Those O.R.s are full of people. So in the cases where somebody actually does get hurt, nobody has to go through it alone._

* * *

"So how does this work?" Alex wondered and held a bowl of candy in one and a bottle of beer in the other hand.  
"We carry Sofia and Zola, Christopher can walk. We don't go into the houses that look too scary so they don't start to cry." Arizona smiled.  
"And after 3 or 4 neighbors we go back and eat cupcakes and pizza." Meredith looked at Alex.  
"Hey, sorry, I had to check on a patient before I got here." Derek said running into the door.  
"You made it. I wouldn't have thought you would after you told me about the little detour to the hospital you had planned." Meredith kissed Derek.  
"Let's go guys." Callie smiled.

By the time they got to the fifth house, Meredith rang the door and Christopher smiled when an old lady opened the door "T'ck o trea" said the boy who was dressed as Woody from Toy Story.  
"Oh how adorable. You are a little cowboy, are you? And you are a pumkin and there's a little lion. Is this exciting for you, little guy?" the lady asked him.  
Christopher looked at Meredith who nodded "Answer Christopher, Ms. Myers is asking you a question." She encouraged him.  
"yay." He nodded.  
"Than have fun and a good night." The neighbour said.  
"Thank you, but this was the last house, wouldn't want to keep those two rugrats up any longer than usual." Derek looked at his two kids.  
"I understand, they get a little cranky if they are getting tired and it's important to make things as normal as possible." She nodded. "Have a good day."


	45. Chapter 45

There's quite a bit of tension in this chapter. Amelia will learn that it's not easy to work at Seattle Grace. (As to Omelia: Cristina is still very much in the picture and as long as she's there Owen's world is going to be pretty much revolving around her.) Sorry for the cliffhanger.

* * *

Chapter 45

 _As surgeons we're trained to consult with each other to get opposing views. We even encourage patients to seek second opinions. But why seek a second opinion when you know that you're right? Because if we're honest with ourselves, the surgeons are more like cowboys. We're more likely to go it alone._

Day 28

Alex and Amelia sat in the cafeteria, Amelia had just finished a 10-hour surgery and Alex was on call "My brother and Meredith are so annoying and so in love and having sex a lot, my brother should have put more money into making that house sound proof, it's disgusting." Amelia ranted "and if they don't have sex they fight. Or they aren't home."  
"Why are you trying to talk to me?" Alex wondered.  
"You are Alex Karev, you are one of the residents." Amelia said "I'm new, so I'm trying to get to know the residents. You are one of them"  
"You don't get to know me by ranting about how much sex your brother is having." Alex said. "No offense. I lived with them. I know they can be loud"  
"and he doesn't give me a chance" Amelia rambled "any other surgeon, he would have been amazed that I applied here. I came to Seattle and I didn't know anyone, but it feels like everyone knows me, I'm little Shepherd."  
"Shepherdess" Alex corrected her  
"What?" Amelia looked up.  
"They call you Shepherdess" Alex said "Little is reserved to Little Grey.".  
"Whatever." Amelia mumbled when Alex walked away. "Don't talk to me! I don't care! Meredith, Cristina, you, you don't have to talk to me!"

At the same time Lexie looked at Meredith "What are you doing, Mer?" she asked her sister who placed a lot of sponges inside the patient. It was late at night and the on call attendings had been too busy.  
"Packing the patient. We have to close her up and wait." Meredith said.  
"Do you think she has a shot if we close her up now? We have to continue" Lexie insisted.  
"It's 50-50. Could go either way. We can't put too much stress on her body now. The bleeding is under control; her spine is fixated. Let Derek and Dr. Bailey do the rest tomorrow." Meredith said "Look at her stats. The lactate levels look good, but with this sort of injury, you never know. It's a miracle she even made it to the OR."  
"Yeah, her spine is crushed. Was crushed." Lexie nodded "I mean you and Callie fixed most of it. How did you even know how to do the fusion?"  
"I'm married to a neurosurgeon who loves to talk about all of his surgeries at the dinner table." Meredith laughed  
"… and you scrubbed in on one" Lexie added "I assume."  
"A few, actually." Meredith nodded "Next year it's going to be you who is doing all those amazing surgeries I mean, if I can, you can."  
"Don't scare me. I could never... do the things you do" Lexie said "You have balls"  
"Well, after a while it's really not that scary anymore. It gets easier." Meredith said "and you can do anything you want Lexie. You are a good doctor."  
"It gets easier" Lexie repeated.  
"Like almost everything. Stop overthinking everything. Life is too short for that. You are a good surgeon, Lex. Dad called." Meredith said and looked at her "He said you stopped taking his calls."  
"You talked to him." Lexie noted.  
"He told me to let you know that he would love to have dinner." Meredith said "and you haven't told him about Jackson, so I might have spilled some beans there."

Callie and Arizona were lying in an on call room bed kissing each other when Callie got paged. "Several broken rips and a broken clavicle." The EMT told Callie who looked at the chart. The name of the boy seemed familiar.  
"What happened to him?" she swallowed. It was the boy who had caused her accident.  
"He was beaten up in juvenile detention." The EMT said. "One of the older kids got him pretty hard."  
Callie looked at the chart and told the nurse "Page Dr. Robbins he needs surgery."

A few minutes later Arizona arrived in the trauma room. "What's the matter?" she asked looking at Callie. Callie summarized the injuries and the patient details before she told Arizona said it was him.  
"I could let him die, I could watch him die, he has fluid in his abdomen, there must be a tear somewhere." Callie said.  
"You are trying to tell me that…" Arizona stuttered. "I can page somebody else."  
"I paged you immediately. I wasn't going to watch him die." Callie pointed out. "We have to get him to surgery."  
"Yeah, there's a tear in the splenic artery." Arizona nodded "We have to get him into an OR asap -and you have to page somebody else. What happened to him anyway?"  
"Karma." Callie mumbled. "He was beaten up in juvie"  
"I'll page somebody, you're off the case." Arizona said.

"Is everything okay, George?" April wondered when she saw George at Joe's.  
"I… I can't tell you everything all the time, April." He said "I like gin. Gin is good. Gin is good. Gin doesn't have cancer and cancer doesn't threaten to take away your daughter and Gin doesn't die." "So what's wrong with ya? I mean, other than the whole "Sofia is my baby" thing." April wondered.  
"Other than that? Is… is there something other than that? You tell me." George said and almost fell off the stool.  
"I'm just a chick with a drink. No judgments." April said.  
"Oh. I get it. You don't want to open up to me. I told Callie that I'm going to file a petition at court to get custody. I want to be on the birth certificate. I want to babysit my child. It's what I want. It's what I did when she wouldn't and she told me that she wouldn't do it, that I was the sperm donor, that I have no rights, that she doesn't want me in her life and she doesn't want me in Sofia's life. She has abandoned her, she refused to be in the same room with her. She's been an awful mom." George said.  
"I know this is difficult George, but she has been assaulted and pushed in front of a car. Her baby was taken from her way too early and now she has a difficult time trying to bond with her. Her whole life changed and she doesn't know how to deal with it." April tried to explain "Maybe if you talk to her again."  
"It's been hard for me too, my mom has cancer and I was the one who paid for the treatment, who took care of her and of Sofia- and now Anna's mom is going to die. Life sucks!" she said.  
"You know what you do when life sucks? You change life." April said "That's what surgeons do- we give people a second chance."  
"They will unplug Anna's mom in two days. I don't know how to handle all of this." George said.  
"Well, Gin is certainly not going to help." April smiled "Let's get you home."

"You told me to give her a chance and I'm asking the same of you." Derek told Meredith while they were running up and down the bed room.  
"She's everywhere" Meredith said "She's there when I have breakfast, when I have rounds, at lunch, the only time I don't see her is when I go to the toilet."  
"She's family." Derek reminded her.  
"There's a reason we don't work on family." Meredith said "They slowly drive you insane."  
"I'm not asking you to work on her, I'm asking you not to ignore her and you are fine working with Lexie" Derek said "She doesn't know a lot of people and…"  
"Derek, I'll help her tomorrow, I'll side with her, support her, if that's what you want, I can do it." Meredith smiled. "So do you want me to do that?"  
"Yeah" Derek nodded "be her sister."

Day 29

Anna sat at her mother's hospital bed like she had many hours after work before, but she had taken off work for two days because she didn't want to miss her last hours with her mother "I'm okay George. I've done this before. I know the drill" she tried to shrug off George. "I have to be alone with her."  
"Anna, it's fine, but there is a day, I looked into some procedures and …" George insisted.  
"Don't give me hope where there is none. Do you want to know what I told Daniel when I saw him bleed out? I told him that he was going to make it, that we'd raise Sophie together and now he isn't here and – mom's health care directive is quite specific. She wants me to shut down any life prolonging treatment after 30 days." Anna said with tears filled eyes  
"Do you feel like you failed him?" George asked straight out "Because you didn't. He might have made it if he had been taken to a different hospital or if… it's not your fault."  
"I feel like I failed him every day, I see Sophie growing up – I know he was supposed to be there with me- but he isn't" Anna admitted "and you and me… I cried when we had sex for the first time and I showered for hours because I felt dirty, it felt like I had cheated on him and he's been gone for years. I mean I should have moved on -and now mom's dying and I..."  
"that's why I was looking into…" George said and paused. "I know this is difficult for you, but I told Callie I want shared custody -like you suggested."  
"What did she say?" Anna asked.  
"That I'd have to sue her for it, that she might not be ready, but that I have no rights here." George said.  
"You looked after her for months." Anna said "I think you really have a shot here."  
"I know." George said "and I know that you should consider that there might actually be a way to save your mother. There are treatments -experimental- but they exist."

After having looked at some of the procedures George had suggested, Anna wanted to hear Derek's opinion about them. He, Amelia and Meredith were in the room when they went over them. "Barbara's repeat EEG shows diffuse slowing consistent with a permanent vegetative state. Surgery won't help. Kayla is not a viable candidate. I'm sorry, Anna." Derek said apologetically.  
"There must be something else you can at least try. She can't just stay like this." Anna said "We can't just let her go"  
"I'm afraid I can't help." Derek said.  
"What about cannulating the aqueduct of Sylvius?" Amelia wondered "- Passing a stent to drain the fluid buildup?"  
"- Dr. Shepherd." Derek tried to interrupt her.  
"Her CSF studies show a slowing of flow, not a complete obstruction. It could work" Amelia insisted. .  
"You know how to wake her?" Anna looked at Amelia.  
"No, she doesn't. She's referring to an experimental procedure that has shown very little success, - and in your mother's case, it will not work." Derek said and looked at Amelia hoping she'd shut up, but she continued. "I assisted in two of the procedures"  
"Now is not the time to bring it up." Derek insisted.  
"So do it or don't, but don't say that it can't work." Amelia tried to stand up for herself.  
"If she thinks that it can work, then we sh –" George tried, but Derek interrupted him "She is a teaching fellow who is not qualified to make this call and you are residents."  
"I graduated top of my class at Harvard. I did my residency at John Hopkins. I have done dozens of procedures in the third ventricle. - I am more than qualified. That's why you hired me." Amelia said  
"Well, clearly I made a mistake." Derek said and left the room.  
"Derek" Meredith tried to hold him back.  
"No, both of you, back of. If I see either one of you talking to her, I make sure you get fired" he said "I read the studies – Anna's mother is too weak for this kind of procedure.".

After lunch Meredith had rounded on Amelia's and Derek's post op patients when she ran into George, Anna and Amelia. "Amelia? George?" Meredith looked at Amelia in disbelief. Derek had been pretty clear about the procedure.  
"Uh, Anna wanted to hear more about the surgery." George stuttered. "So we started talking, and one thing led to another, and, uh"  
"And what?" Amelia asked with anger "You and Anna came to me."  
"He slept with her? Kissed her?" Meredith teased George who blushed instantly.  
"And she asked me to find Amelia and let her do the surgery." George added.  
"And I said yes. I can do the surgery. I just need Dr. Altman to maintain the cardiovascular function." Amelia said and handed over the surgical plan to Meredith "I need you to run this by Derek"

"Maybe he needs more time." Callie looked at the boy in the ICU. Even after twenty hours he still hadn't woken up.  
"Time? So we have to wait?" Arizona asked "He did this to you and I don't want to see him."  
"Well, what do you want, a magic pill that makes me better or that makes him better? Bad things happen. You can fix them, maybe, but it doesn't mean they didn't happen." Callie said "Sometimes you just have to wait and they get better – because you heal. So don't go in there to that boy and try to sugarcoat anything to him or to me and don't pretend it's all better when it's not."  
"Well, I should've seen it. You know, I could've stopped it." Arizona stammered.  
"You are not responsible for what that boy did any more than you're responsible for what happened to me." Callie tried to make Arizona feel better "and I'm feeling better, I am."  
"I'm sorry, Callie. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner." Arizona admitted "If I hadn't went to Africa, this wouldn't have happened."  
"You came when you could." Callie cried, "I was stubborn and I was so so stubborn and we just…"  
"No, no. I'm sorry that I did not come sooner before the assault. I should have fought harder to fix things. If we had went there together, if I hadn't gone to Africa, none of this would have happened.  
"You came when you could." Callie said.  
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Arizona started to cry. "I'm sorry, you know that, right?"  
„Callie held her and for a moment she was glad that it was the first time she was able to offer support to Arizona "Mm. Shh, shh. You're here now and I'm here."  
"So a bad thing happened, and I can't change that. And sometimes the things people say to try to make you feel better, they just come out sounding stupid." Arizona said with tears running down her eyes "So, um you tell me what you need -tell me what you were going to tell me before he came in."  
"George wants custody of Sofia, he told me" Callie said "I told him he can't see her."  
"Why would you do that?" Arizona said.  
"I don't want to loose her."

In the afternoon George walked up to Amelia and Meredith "How well, how how would this work? Just for Anna's sake, I want to know how this would work."  
"I would relieve the obstruction by placing a stent in the aqueduct, and then as the pressure drops, the activity in the brain stem will return, - and Barbara wakes up." Amelia said. "Just to let you know, you couldn't be in that OR. I don't let family operate in my OR."  
"And if it works, what state will she be in? Will she be able to function?" George asked.  
"I don't know. But if we don't do it, we will never know." Amelia admitted. "I mean, I'd have to get a..."

Meredith took the chart to Teddy and Derek, talked about the procedure while Amelia was trying to get FDA approval. After Amelia had joined them in the meeting room it was time to receive the feedback.  
"I'm against this." Teddy said.  
"I am, too. Two neurosurgeons said no to this, one being your mentor, - the other being your brother." Derek said and looked at his sister.  
"Ginsberg looked at an e-mail of a scan. I mean, she didn't even see the patient, which ultimately doesn't matter, because Anna Miller made a decision to save her mother. She asked me to do it, and I can do it." Amelia insisted and both attendings mumbled "Great."  
"I'll get you an O.R. for tomorrow." Meredith said "In case they change their mind."  
"Meredith, I didn't approve. Don't you book an OR for this procedure in my hospital" Derek threatened.  
"Why do you fight her on this?" Meredith wondered "This is a cutting-the-edge procedure- you would be supporting of every other surgeon who wants to attempt this. She doesn't have a chance anyway, Dr. Altman. Tomorrow they'd unplug her and that's it. So this procedure is giving her a chance. If she dies on the table- she'd be dead anyway. So maybe the two of you can reconsider."

Day 30

Meredith was the last person in the scrub room when Derek walked into the room "Don't look at me like this. We both want to give her a chance. - What, do you really think I can talk her out of it? - I couldn't talk you out of it." Meredith insisted.  
"I think you could try." Derek insisted. "It's not too late"  
"She's your sister." Meredith looked at Derek "and you are the Chief -if you don't want her to do the surgery, that's your call. She has government approval."  
"You are on her service." Derek said.  
"Why did you agree to the surgery if you clearly don't agree with it?" Meredith wondered. "If you don't want her to do it, I think you could try talking to her." Meredith insisted "Anna wants this, Amelia is set, and she got the consent of the patient's daughter. You know her. I couldn't stop her."  
"You know this is wrong." Derek tried to insist.  
"I think it's not so easy." Meredith smiled.  
"Meredith, if I see you in that OR" Derek tried to treaten her, but Meredith kew the right response.  
"… I'm doing my job. Don't make this about us. "

Everyone was gathered in the gallery. This was an exciting surgery. Amelia was going to re-establish the brain function of a patient.  
"Shepherd's little sister has balls." Alex smirked.  
"Yeah. Going against her brother. But It's still neuro." Cristina said  
"Neuro is brilliant." Lexie said "Just look at those screens."  
"What kind of family is this? Two neurosurgeons?" Jackson asked.  
"Says Harper Avery's grandson" Lexie teased him.  
"to the daughter of Ellis Grey's ex-husband" Cristina laughed.  
"Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke." Lexie laughed.  
"What is Meredith doing in there?" Jackson wondered when he saw Meredith approaching Amelia.  
"Maybe Shepherd talked her into talking his sister out of it, I don't know." Cristina guessed.  
"She'll help her, they are going to do the surgery" George said. "Amelia said she needed someone"

"Are you here to talk me out of this again? Because I'm here for my patients. Ventriculoscope is in place and I'm moving down to the aqueduct. So far, so good." Amelia said while being completely concentrated on the patient.  
"No. You're doing great. Keep going." Meredith reassured her.  
"All right. I am in the aqueduct. Guide is in place. Preparing the stent. Almost there." She said when the monitors started beating erratically. "All right, heart rate's up to 130. 140." Meredith said "She's desaturating.- She's thrown another clot."  
"I'm going to keep going." Amelia insisted.  
"All right. She's in distress" Teddy Altman pointed out "I'll need time to remove the clot. Dr. Shepherd, step back."  
"I can do this, Dr. Altman" Amelia insisted.  
"Step away from the table, Dr. Shepherd."

"Dr. Altman?" Amelia looked at her every move nervously.  
"Almost there. 30cc syringe. And clots are dissolving. Vitals are stabilizing. The rest is up to you, ." Teddy smiled.  
"I almost killed her" Amelia whispered to herself "What am I doing?"  
"You're a doing surgery on a woman's brain." Meredith stated calmly "A surgery you said only you could do, a surgery you fought for. Stop standing there and start acting like a surgeon."  
"You don't sound like a dirty mistress. Nancy called you that. Kathleen likes you though" Amelia said "I think I like you"  
"No, I sound like you before you started losing confidence in yourself." Meredith tried to help Amelia "Amelia, can you do this? Can you wake this woman up and bring her back to her family? Or were just spouting a bunch of mess because you like to cut?"  
Amelia looked at Meredith "I can do this".  
"Okay, then. Go. We don't have all day." Meredith insisted.  
"Adjust the scope. Set up the catheter for the stent." Amelia looked at the scrub nurse  
"Let's show your brother he's not the only Shepherd who can make magic." Meredith mumbled.

"My dad wants to meet you." Lexie said when she sat down next to Jackson in the cafeteria. "He wants to meet may boyfriend."  
"Thatcher?" Jackson asked.  
"Yeah, that's his name." Lexie nodded while drinking from a juice box.  
"I thought you stopped talking." He wondered. "and I thought we didn't want to meet the parents."  
"We did, but Mer kind of mentioned you and he is curious and – he wants to meet you and… where are you going?"  
"I never meet the parents." Jackson smiled nervously.  
"We are living in the same house." Lexie insisted "If you don't want me to meet your family, that's fine."  
"I know, but I need time to process." Jackson said and got up to answer a fake page leaving Lexie alone with her juice box.

It was the same scene over and over again. Meredith and Derek fought in the kitchen. Ever since he had taken the job as Chief it seemed like it was all they did whenever they were at home together "I can't believe you backed her up on this." Derek shouted.  
"Derek, this woman was PVS, she deserved a chance. She has a daughter and a granddaughter. She's a person. Derek, Amelia did a procedure she was confident would help the patient. You would have done the same. It was a bold move, but it worked. Your sister was right." Meredith responded.  
"Don't pick her side!" he asked her "Have you thought of any other patient who might have benefitted from this procedure after it has been approved officially. If they forbid this procedure because it…"  
"I'm not choosing sides." Meredith insisted "I was assigned to her service."  
"Good because I'm your boss and I'm surely the better neurosurgeon." Derek said.  
"And I'm the better parent." Meredith said in what turned into a truly detrimental fight "I stayed with Christopher for potty training this morning, I waited 20 very long minutes until he was finished while you rushed off."  
"I had paper work to take care off." He tried to make an excuse.  
"Don't you think people don't care if I show up late for work? This is not the first time this is happening. I missed out on a surgery because of this." Meredith reminded him.  
"And Amelia let you scrub in on hers because you went against me." Derek said defiant.  
"No, because I'm the resident she knows best." Meredith said and added "And I'm someone she trusts." Trust was clearly something they lacked on some level. But without sounding hypocrite Meredith couldn't really blame Derek for it.  
"Do you know how this looks like?" Derek wondered.  
"Do you care how it looks like? Because all I care about is that we give Barbara a chance to live her life again. Amelia can do this!" Meredith tried to sway him "She's staying at the hospital to keep track of her progress"  
"You don't know if she's going to wake up." Derek said "That's why she's staying"  
"But we tried and that's all you can ." Meredith said "Good night."  
"It's 7.00 pm, you don't want to go to bed, do you?" Derek wondered.  
"I do, Zola is in bed and Christopher is waiting for his bath and needs to pee before you take him to bed. And he still needs the diapers at night." Meredith said "You can spend some time with him."  
"Meredith" Derek said.  
"No Derek. In this house I'm your wife and you are my husband. You are not the hot shot neurosurgeon and you are not my boss." Meredith interrupted him.  
"Meredith" Derek tried again, but Meredith interrupted him again. "Don't Meredith me! If any other neurosurgeon would have taken the lead on this, you wouldn't act like this. You act like this because we are talking about your sister."  
"Meredith, I love you" Derek said "I miss being in the OR. I'm moody and I'm sorry"

The next morning started with Meredith and Amelia rounding on their post-op patients. Anna was waiting in her mother's room when they walked in to check on the progress she had made "It didn't work."Amelia mumbled to Meredith after she checked the pupilar reflex.  
"You don't know that." Meredith said  
"The other patients were at least marginally responsive by now. I freaked out, Mer." Amelia insisted "Maybe I took too long. Maybe I should've stopped. Maybe Derek was ..."  
Meredith looked at Anna's mom who was moaning "She's in pain." Meredith interrupted Amelia's freakout  
"Is that good or bad?" Anna wondered and looked at them.  
"That's not a pain response." Amelia said as the moaning got louder.  
"Neither is that." Meredith said and looked at Amelia who quickly started to examine Barbara.  
"Mom?" Anna grabbed one of her hands and kissed it.  
"Pupils are equal and reactive. - Positive doll's eye response." Amelia said with a smile.  
"Is she waking up?" Anna asked.  
"Her brain stem reflexes are improving." Amelia said.  
"She's waking up?" Anna tried to reassure herself.  
"She's waking up." Amelia nodded when Barbara mumbled "Baby?"  
"She's waking up." Meredith smiled.

Derek sat in his office when Amelia stormed in. "Derek, It worked. I was right." She said.  
"No. No, you were not right. You overreached and you overstepped and you forced Dr. Altman to save her. - She could've died." Derek said "You pitched a highly experimental procedure to a patient without it being solicited."  
"- But she's okay. She survived." Amelia interjected. "She's alive"  
"She's stable, at least for now. But don't kid yourself. You got lucky in there." Derek said. Amelia knew that Derek was probably right. "She has cancer so whatever success your surgery might have, it might just end in 6 months or a year after excruciating sessions of chema or radiation or surgeries."  
"No, that wasn't –" Amelia said "I didn't get lucky. I knew what I was doing."  
"You could be a great surgeon. But right now, you're not half as good as you think you are, and I say that as a doctor with far more experience than you." Derek said and Amelia started to walk out of the room, but turned around when she heard what Derek added after that "But as your brother look at that. She's up, she's awake. That's a family, and you did that. Those kids have a mother. He's got the woman he loves. So celebrate that, 'cause it's a miracle."

Lexie was in her room reading a few new medical journals when Jackson came in and looked at her. He hesitated a little bit when she looked at him questiongly. "It's fine, Lexie. We can meet him." Jackson said "I think I can get over it"  
"If you ever want to talk about your dad, you know, you can." Lexie said.  
"I don't think I want to… it was messy and I don't ever want to think about it again. I haven't seen him in… 20 years… my mother won custody and he never made an effort to show up after that – he vanished…" Jackson stuttered.  
"He was the guy that poured your cereals…" Lexie nodded.  
Jackson looked at her even more confused than he already seemed before. "I never liked cereals… but yeah… I don't remember him."  
"I get it Jackson, your father has never been a father and you get nervous if you are supposed to meet someone else's dad." Lexie stammered "Meredith has been the same, but if you make an effort, you might find out that it was worth it."

 _You can seek the advice of others, surround yourself with trusted advisers. But in the end, the decision is always yours, and yours alone. And when it's time to act, you're all alone with your back against the wall. The only voice that matters is the one in your head. The one telling you what you probably already knew. The one that's almost always right._

Derek and Meredith followed each other through the house yelling at one another: "You could have told me."  
"I haven't" Meredith spat out  
"You backed Amy up on this, when you should have had my back." Derek insisted "I'm the Chief of Surgery -do you know what it looks like if even my wife defies me."  
"Derek, we can't do this. I can't be a resident here – and you can't be a giant jackass." Meredith yelled "You asked me to side with her. You asked me to help her ease in. So what is this about? Is it because she was able to save a patient you haven't been able to save?"  
"She might actually be better than me. – she doesn't know it, but it's scary." Derek said and looked at Meredith who moved her hands like she wanted him to keep talking "Amy doesn't have a clue that ten years from now I actually might be the other doctor Shepherd. She's good. Good instincts and –"  
"So why do you make it hard for her?" Meredith asked "and me for that matter."  
"I'm not used to being the other Dr. Shepherd -and she has to learn how to not roll a dice." Derek said "So what is it that you wanted to tell me when you came home?"  
"I was pregnant, Derek, when I went to Boston - I was pregnant. I was pregnant and I lost it." Meredith said. Meredith looked at Derek who was still looking at her "Are you not going to say anything?" she wondered.  
"It was mine, right?" he stuttered.  
"I can't believe you need to ask me that" Meredith said and grabbed her keys and coat. "I'll sleep at the hospital tonight."


	46. Chapter 46

I'm soooooo sorry. I know it's been a lifetime since I posted the last chapter. We've recently started house hunting, my mom and my father in law have been to the hospital (two unrelated issues in two states) and wedding season and all the preparations have hit us hard, there are wedding planners who went to fewer wedding related events than we did in the past four weeks with 3 weddings, 3 rehersal dinners and helping with the preparations.

But the foremost reason I took so long was that I had to rewrite a good bit of the storyline I envisioned for Callie and George as it was way too close to what happened between Callie and Arizona on the show, that took some time as I had to change quite a few things for George's character. I hope you are going to enjoy it...

* * *

Chapter 46

 _When you've tried everything, but that headache won't go away, you can't stop coughing, the swelling won't go down... That's when you turn to a professional. As surgeons, we spend years developing skills of perception that allow us to see exactly what the problem is. The trouble is, some times all that time spent developing those skills of perception can leave a person with an extremely narrow point of view. And how are you supposed to argue with someone who has science on their side?_

Richard was back from rehab. Word had travelled faster and had spread to Derek quicker than normal. He had stopped to pay attention to the gossip these days. According to nurse Anneliese he was headed for a divorce -and honestly he couldn't blame Meredith if she considered it. He had acted like an asshole and his mom would probably tell him to apologize. He had been stuck at the hospital that even though he hadn't deliberately avoided Meredith, he hadn't seen her in two weeks. Now Richard was sitting in his office. The nurse who had admitted him had been fairly secretive about the reason he was back. His time in rehab was almost over and Derek figured that his time as Chief would finally followed suit. Richard looked relaxed, a little slimmer, but usually the food in a rehab clinic was nothing to write home about "I'm so glad you are back. I can't tell you how graceful I am if I don't ever have to step a foot inside this office again." Derek greeted Richard "I've been stuck here and… how are you?"  
"Better." Richard said and looked down on the floor.  
"So, when are you going to come back?" Derek wondered. "I can be out of here within a day or two"  
"I'm not coming back. Something showed up in my blooed work during rehab and they want to check if it's anything serious." Richard explained and watched Derek look at the picture of Zola, Christopher and Meredith "What happened Derek?"  
"I don't like the job, I don't like deciding who gets how much money, I miss the OR and I miss the kids, I…" Derek stuttered and looked at his mentor "I messed things up with Meredith and I meant to tell her how sorry I am for a week now, but I don't get out of this freaking office."  
"What happened?" Richard wondered. "You seemed okay when I left."  
"I can't tell you, Richard." Derek said "I have to fix this on my own and it turns out, I have to manage to find a day that has more than 24 hours."

* * *

George knocked on Callie's door. "Can you tell me if I can see Sofia? I wanna see her." He stuttered "I've been…" Callie tried to close the door, put George rang the bell again.  
"No George, you can't see her." Callie yelled through the door "You are saying I'm a bad mom"  
"I'm not saying that." George said "Callie, please open the door! I haven't seen her since…"  
"You threatened to take me to court!" she opened the door and yelled at him "You said I'm a bad mother, you are saying I'm unstable. That is precisely what your lawyer wrote. Let me quote 'Ms Torres exhibits patterns of self-destructive behaviour.'"  
"Callie. I didn't write that, I never said that." George said. "I was happy to take care of her when you needed someone. Can we act like we never broke each other's heart? If I was anyone else… would you let me see her?"  
"I really need someone, but given the court thing, you can't be that person." Callie said "You want to take my baby away."  
"I don't want to beg every time I want to see her." George said.  
"I don't want to share her. You haven't been in this." Callie stood her point "You haven't been in this until I was hit by a truck."

* * *

Meanwhile, Meredith and Cristina said in the basement and enjoyed an uninterrupted lunchbreak "So he still hasn't talked to you?" Cristina wondered while trying to stitch up a grape with her left hand.

"Well, I've successfully avoided him all week. Im still angry. I mean… why does it even matter? Zola isn't his." Meredith said "It was his and… But I guess I would have been angry too."  
"He could have apologized." Cristina insisted "I mean, my boyfriend talked to Shepherd's sister about wanting to have kids in the OR and never bothered telling me."  
"Well, he could have, and I'm sure he didn't mean it, that he was shocked and …" Meredith looked at her yoghurt "I guess he felt like I felt on that chair…"  
"Don't make apologies for him." Cristina looked up from the grape she had positioned on the gurney. "You lost a freaking child and he has the audacity to ask you whether it was his sperm that inseminated your egg."  
"Well, we were broken up and I was away quite some time." Meredith said. Ever since that fight she had thought about her point of view, and his point of view and everyone's point of view. "-It was his child too. He's been so stressed lately."  
"You told him that there was nobody else" Cristina said.  
"At least we can talk about it now -if I ever see him again." Meredith rolled her eyes. She had been on peds rotation for the past weeks. In the beginning it had been to avoid Derek, in the end Arizona had requested her for more surgeries while Alex was trying to log more hours in other specialties "I have to go now, Jackson is meeting my dad and – he's freaking out."

* * *

Meredith arrived at her father's house fourty minutes later. She was wearing a pair of nice paints – nice enough for a mother of two, while Jackson had suited up and walked up and down the sidewalk. "Ready?" she looked at Jackson. Lexie had cooked dinner and had already texted Jackson to come in.  
"Ready to face the demon, yeah." Jackson coughed.  
"Thatcher is really not that bad." Meredith laughed "If you would have to meet my mom tonight, you would have every reason to be afraid, but Thatcher isn't that bad. He loves Lexie and unless you are a drug dealer he isn't going to eat you alive. He was fine with Molly getting married at 20, so you will be fine."  
Lexie opened the door and looked at Meredith in surprise "Why is Meredith here?" she asked.  
"I asked her to be there because I thought it would be less awkward if this wasn't a meet-the-boyfriend dinner." Jackson said and walked in after kissing his girlfriend hello.  
"Well it won't be more awkward than the meet-the-estranged- half-sister dinner we had." Meredith smirked and hugged Lexie.  
"It wasn't that bad." Lexie lied.  
"Do you remember anything about that evening?" Meredith wondered and the sisters exchanged a look.  
"You're right, but we have experience with awkward family dinners now." Lexie smirked.  
"At least you have experience with family dinners." Jackson said "All I had was a Sunday interrogation at the dinner table."  
"You had a dinner table. I still feel betrayed that there are world class surgeons who have dinner tables." Meredith teased him.  
"We better get going or we are going to be super late." Lexie pointed them to the living room where Thatcher was already waiting for them.

* * *

Anna looked at George who was holding a picture of Sofia. He hadn't seen her ever since he had taken legal action to get partial custody and visitation schedules put into place. "George, your court date is two weeks away and you haven't talked to anyone if they want to take a stand for you." Anna reminded him "You need someone on your side – someone who is not your girlfriend."  
"There's still time." George said.  
"There's never enough time. You want this and you have to stop letting everyone taking advantage of your kindness!" Anna said "You deserve to be in Sofia's life. You love her and you took care of her when Callie couldn't."  
"They are Callie's friends too. I can't ask them to pick sides." George looked at Anna "Callie has the better case- she's the mother."  
"You don't have to do that. You don't have to ask them to portray Callie as a bad parent. It's not about sole custody, it's about visitation and being a part in her life." Anna smiled "-I don't get it. If I had the choice to have my daughter's dad in her life – I'd love to have that choice."  
"Why are you pushing me so hard here?" George wondered.  
"Because I care about you -and I know that you care about her. And looking at my daughter – I'd love if her father still was a part of her life." Anna said "Look around, I'm sure there are a few people you can ask"

* * *

Jackson walked into the room. Meredith noticed that it had changed from the last time she had been there. While it had looked like a family living room with a lot of childhood pictures on the walls and the fireplace, it had a cold, anonymous look now. "Hello Mr. Grey." Jackson greeted Thatcher.  
"You can call me Thatcher, nice to meet you Jackson." Meredith dad said with a smile on his face. "Lexie told me a lot about you. Hello Lexie, Hello Meredith."  
"Hello." Meredith mumbled.  
"I tried to cook something, but it's not so good, mom was the way better cook" Lexie tried to lighten up the atmosphere.  
"I haven't cooked dinner since …" Thatcher mumbled and starred at Meredith.  
„you were married to Ellis." Meredith nodded "But you were a good cook than. I loved your mac'n'cheese." She smiled.  
"You love all kinds of junk food, Meredith!" Jackson laughed.  
"So you are all working at the hospital?" Thatcher asked hesitantly. He had his fair share of surgeons in the family.  
"Yes, Jackson is in Meredith's year." Lexie explained.  
"Oh, I brought something for you, a little gift. Something nice" Jackson smiled and presented a bottle of wine to Thatcher. He was obviously oblivious to Thatcher's addiction.  
"Jackson, I don't think this is…" Lexie mumbled while they all looked at the bottle.  
"… Jackson, he…" Meredith tried to suggest to him that it might be better to put the bottle away.  
"What the girls are trying to tell you is that I'm an alcoholic." Thatcher said with a clear voice "I can't drink any alcohol. Not any more".  
"Oh, Meredith and Lexie never mentioned. I'm so sorry." Jackson said.  
"It's fine." Thatcher nodded "How are the kids Meredith?"  
"Fine, we are going to visit some time soon. It's just really busy, Derek is interim chief. But maybe we should talk about something else. The kids are great, but that's not the reason we are here." Meredith tried to steer the conversation back to Jackson. Her most recent fight with Derek wasn't something she wanted to talk about.  
"Thank you Grey." Jackson looked at Meredith.  
"So you met at the hospital." Thatcher noted. Half question, half fact.  
"Well, Meredith and I met when we were kids. She pushed me down the slide when we …" Jackson started to explain and mistook the you for Meredith.  
"I think he was asking how you met Lexie." Meredith smiled at Jackson.  
He paused for a second. "Yes, we met at the hospital. He was working at Mercy West before the merger -and now we a"  
"Relationship, he's my boyfriend. He's my boyfriend. Jackson is my boyfriend." Lexie said a few more times more often than a normal human being would have. "He's…"  
"Jackson is her boyfriend." Meredith interrupted her with a smile.  
"I figured as much." Thatcher smiled.  
"Come on, you were rambling far worse when you met me here." Lexie looked at her sister. "I will go into the kitchen and get dinner."  
"Why don't you stay here and I will carry everything over." Meredith suggested "Don't look at me like that. I won't burn anything by bringing it here and I won't blow up the kitchen. And if I'm finished, I'm going to leave because I'm sure "

* * *

Next day

Meredith walked into daycare with Zola who was playing with her giraffe. Suddenly Derek was standing next to her while she dropped her off "I didn't expect you'd be here" she noted when he was waiting for her on the bench just outside the door.  
"I'm here quite often. It's the only place where nobody bothers me because I'm the Chief." Derek explained "I tried to call you." Meredith had been on her way back home when Derek had tried to call her.  
"I know – we had dinner at dad's house." Meredith said, after their eyes met she added "You haven't been home in days."  
"I thought you didn't want me there. I was a jerk." Derek admitted.  
"Sometimes husbands can be jerks. Doesn't mean they stop talking to their wives." Meredith teased him. "You get that I'm saying I'm sorry right? We had a fight and I walked away and you never showed up. That's not how it's supposed to work. You fight sometimes, and somebody apologizes. I'm sorry – for not telling you."  
"Hmm. Okay, all right." Derek swallowed "Well this is...from now on, you can expect that I'm gonna show up. Even if I yell. Even if you yell. I'm always going to show up okay?"  
"I'm mad at you, but I missed you- despite what you said." Meredith said "You need to sleep, you need to take part in our life, in the kids' lives. I might have lost a child, but we have two kids -and they are here. We are not Meredith and Derek right now. At the moment I am Meredith and you are Derek. Can you come home tonight? We need to talk." The words were out "We need to talk." They had survived Boston, they had figured out how to raise kids and juggling their careers, this would be another thing they had overcome.  
"I promise you I'm going to be there tonight." Derek said.  
"Thank you." Meredith mumbled "They really miss you. We really miss you. I can't sleep alone. Your side of the bed is empty -and there are so many things we need to talk about."  
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed you didn't tell me because…." Derek closed his eyes.  
"I heard Richard is going to be back soon, everything will be easier when we go back to how things were" Meredith said. She hadn't heard why he was back.  
"Yeah, everything is going to be easier once Richard is back" Derek sighed. Officially his successful visit to the rehabilitation clinic was the reason for all the tests they were doing, but unfortunately Derek knew what they were testing for.

* * *

Meredith walked up to the pediatric ward when she was approached by Dr. Bailey who was holding a brown paper bag. "Dr. Grey, I want you to run these labs, be discrete." She whispered like this was some sort of covert mission.  
"They are Richard's, aren't they?" Meredith looked at her.  
"Yes. He's back from rehab and the board wants him to go through an advanced check up before he can have his job back." Bailey told her. This had been the explanation that had been given to everyone.  
"I'm going to rush those. The sooner he's back, the better." Meredith thought.

* * *

A little later…

"He has a history of liver cancer in his family. My mom talked about it. I guess we'll have to do further tests. It might be nothing, I mean his liver is still regenerating." Meredith was talking to one of the nurses. "But I want to be sure."  
"I'll take care of it. Don't tell anyone about it." Bailey said and took over the chart while giving the nurse a deathly stare.  
"What are you two doing here?" Richard wondered when Meredith, Derek and Bailey walked into Derek's office where Richard had waited.  
"We are trying to talk you into fighting for your life! Don't tell me I have to call Adele!" Bailey lectured him  
"Don't call her. He has named you as his next of kin." Derek said and looked at Meredith.  
"Meredith?" Bailey looked at the Chief and Richard.  
"Me? We aren't related." Meredith looked puzzled "Is it…"  
"He named you as next of kin." Derek said. "I looked it up this morning"  
"I didn't know." Meredith uttered hesitantly. She wondered why Richard would have chosen her.  
"I thought he had mentioned something to you." Derek looked at both Meredith and Richard.  
"When did he do it?" Meredith looked at the form Derek had handed over to her.  
"The third day of your internship" Derek said. It had been way before any of the rest had happened. It had been before the day she had found out about Ellis' affair. 'You are the spiting image of your mother' he had told her.  
"After the first surgery with him… I didn't know" Bailey nodded. "Show him the results we just talked about."  
„Look at the AFP marker." Meredith said. She knew that Richard's family had a history of liver cancer. His brother's death had been mentioned in Ellis' journals. She had found him crying in the locker room during intern year and that's where everything had started.  
"Why did you order that stat?" Bailey asked in surprise. Meredith had known what to do, what to look for -when it came to medicine she had a natural intuition.  
"What do you want us to do?" Derek looked at Richard and Meredith.  
"I don't know, but there are a lot of things I don't know these days." Meredith answered "He doesn't want to fight."  
"Come on, Dr. Webber." Bailey tried to encourage him "Why don't you want to fight? We caught it early… there is a chance…"  
"Why don't you leave me alone?" Richard wondered and Derek nodded. They left the room and Meredith and Bailey began to question his decision.  
"Maybe he feels like he doesn't have anything to live for…" Derek suggested to them.  
"Oh, seriously. You don't think you…" Meredith looked at him.  
"You have forgiven him" Derek tried to challenge her.  
"I'm the doctor on his case. It's my job. I root for my patients." Meredith said "You should know that I'm one hell of a good doctor. I'll try to talk to him."  
"I love you Meredith" Derek whispered.  
"and I would love you to be physically present." Meredith looked at him.

* * *

It was 8 pm and the kids were alredy in bed when Meredith heard a noise at the door. "Hey" Derek peaked over the brown paper bag full of groceries. Neither of them said a word and both of them chose to investigate the look on each other's face.  
"You accepted the permanent Chief position. Congrats." Meredith mumbled. She knew he was hiding something from her.  
"You look upset, but how do you know?" he wondered "They promised me not to say a word"  
"Your face. I see it and I get it, you are happy, but you promised you'd make more time for our family and now you go back on that promise." Meredith put away her 'Journal of Surgery' before she continued "And you assumed I didn't tell you about the miscarriage because it wasn't ours. It hurts that you choose not to be with me"  
"The board asked me to do it." Derek defended his decision.  
"And you hate that job!" Meredith said.  
"I worked my ass off to get to where I am now." Derek's voice got louder. Meredith knew she had hit a nerve.  
"You hate that job! I know you do! I do! You don't have time for us, you don't have time for surgeries, you don't have time for research, you don't have time for anything that was important to you before you accepted that position. You don't have any time for what you told me was important to you when I told you I was pregnant. I can't do this alone, this isn't what I signed up for." Meredith stood her point. "I'm not going to be that wife.  
"I made time for research. Dr. Springer and my trial is going to the next stage. We got a huge research grant and we are going to use the findings to …." Derek tried to make a point, but Meredith interrupted him. "So I'm supposed to be thankful because you want to spend time apart from me and your kids?"  
"I'm trying to build a reputation. A reputation that keeps food on the table." Derek said.  
Meredith remembered one of her mother's interviews. She didn't have it easy, but she never allowed a man to walk all over her -at least professionally. Meredith had suffered through the consequences of the one exemption to the rule. She would stand her ground. She wasn't some 1960s house wife. "Because I'm not making any money or paying any bills? Seriously? Derek, I don't care about your reputation. I want to spend time with my husband and my kids. Remember the trip to the zoo? When was the last time we did one of those? When was the last time you smiled after coming home from work? You are not happy being Chief.  
"I worked my ass off for years to get to where I'm now." Derek repeated.  
"You are not happy. You wanted to have the job and you are miserable now and too cowardice to admit it." Meredith said "I know you"  
"Why are you trying to hold me back and sabotage my career?" Derek wondered.  
"I'm not trying to sabotage your career, I'm trying to stand up for my family -and my husband who is unhappy. I don't want us to end up like Ellis and Thatcher." Meredith said "I love the real Derek – not this version of you."  
"Well, I'm myself. Learn to live with it." Derek said and watched Meredith grab her jacket and keyes "Don't go now, no running, remember? We promised each other we wouldn't run, but all you do is running."  
"I'm not running." Meredith leaned over the kitchen counter and looked Derek in the eye. "I'm trying to think and I can't think if all I can keep thinking is that I want to punch you in the face"  
"You run, you run to your mother's house, you run to Boston, you run to New York, you run even though you promised you wouldn't." Derek said.  
"Well, we promised each other a lot of things." Meredith mumbled and put her keys back down. "The kids are asking for you when I tuck them in. They are wondering why you are not coming home, Derek."  
"I'll try. I'm busy." Derek said, but realized that this was the wrong approach. "I love you, Mer. I love you and I love the kids and there's nothing more important in the world. I love all of you- But…"  
"There's always a but, is there?" Meredith looked at his hands who were moving constantly.  
"I have a career too." Derek said "They want me to be the Chief of surgery."  
"And at this moment in time your career is more important. I know that line." Meredith nodded.

* * *

Derek looked at Meredith and sighed "I don't want to fight. You had a miscarriage and you didn't tell me, but I want to know. I want you to trust me enough to tell me those things."  
"I lost it the day you left Boston." Meredith said.  
"You could have called" Derek suggested.  
"Maggie tried to call you, but you haven't answered." Meredith said and suddenly Derek realized what he must have done while Meredith had lost their child. "It would have been a girl – in case you were wondering." She added.  
"What happened?" Derek asked. "…to our child"  
"Her heart stopped beating. There was nothing anyone could have done. It happened." Meredith said "It was just over"  
"You could have told me. I'm sorry." Derek smiled "and I'm sorry for not being here – for not listening to you."  
"She would have been beautiful." Meredith said with teary eyes.  
"I'm sure she would have been" Derek tried to touch Meredith's hands to comfort her "Meredith, I shouldn't have…"  
"It's okay. I know that you didn't mean it." Derek said. "I can try Meredith."

* * *

Next day

"George, you are a great dad. You can be very proud of her and yourself. Both of you can be very proud of everything you achieved." Meredith smiled "I just think that you should talk to each other. I'm sure you can figure out something."  
"I'm worried. Sofia is one and she still hasn't started talking or babbling or making any sound except crying. I'm afraid there's something wrong with her." George said "Callie…"  
Meredith interrupted him "It took Zola a while. Don't worry before she turns two."  
"Zola came here from another continent." George said with a raised eye brow.  
"and Sofia was born prematurely. She's still within the normal range. She's such a happy baby." Meredith said and looked at her. She enjoyed being in daycare while Derek was in surgery.  
"Not a worry in the world. You look at her and it changes you." George nodded  
"How are things with Callie? I mean it can't be easy given the court thing." Meredith wanted to know.  
"I want to destroy her." George said "I want to be with her and I want to show the judge that I can't be without her."  
"Do you really want to do that? You have to look at her every day. She isn't going away." Meredith said. "I mean, my dad never fought for me, I wish he had, but I know what it's like to grow up with two parents constantly fighting."  
"We are trying to work it out. Callie went to see my mom last week. She introduced Sofia to her." George said "She was so delighted. I mean it's her first grandchild. She was ecstatic."  
"Susan was too when Molly had Laura. Man, that seems like a life-time ago. I wish she would have gotten to meet Chris and Zozo." Meredith mumbled "I'm not so sure about Ellis."  
"Yeah, I wish my dad was still here." George nodded.  
"I was so hesitant to meet them it's I don't know. It was like I was afraid to be happy." Meredith said without really listening to George "She was such a lovely woman."  
"When did we become adults?" George wondered.  
"and how do we make it stop?" Meredith laughed "Derek, it's like he's so distant. I mean he's right there, but at the same time he's so far away. I hardly get to see him. It's like we don't see eye to eye anymore. He hasn't forgiven me for going to Boston and New York for the interviews and for choosing General over neuro."  
"You want to get a divorce?" George asked straight out.  
"No, I'm worried he wants one." Meredith said. After all Derek had been divorced before.  
"But you love him and he loves you." George insisted.  
"Thatcher loved Ellis and Ellis loved Thatcher at one stage. They got a divorce and they weren't alright for each other, but they loved each other at one point. Just like you and Callie. Whenever I see him he's at work or we argue or we are at work and argue. He was happy that I was back, that I was staying but now I'm like the nanny." Meredith looked at the kids. While she was talking to George Sofia and Zola were playing dress up.  
"Callie is going to hate me." George said.  
"Don't make her hate you" Meredith said. "It's easy, be respectful"

* * *

Richard walked through the halls and finally got to the oncology wing. He had been there plenty of times before. He had worked with oncologists, he had seen patients come and go, heal and die. This part of the hospital looked different now. He was taken by surprise when he heard a voice from behind. "It's not as bad as it looks. I mean it hurts like hell, but it's better than dying."  
"Oh, I was just looking." He turned around and looked at a woman in her early 60s without hair.  
"Oh, sorry, the way you looked…" the woman smiled. "Usually only people who are having their first round of chemo look that way."  
"I have cancer, but this… this isn't what I want to do…" Richard said.  
"Is it to progressed?" the woman wondered.  
"No, but, I… I don't…" Richard stuttered and looked at her. "Why did you fight?"  
"My daughter… She's at a stage in her life where she finally is in a stable happy place. I survived – Dr. Shepherd saved me and then his sister did- and Anna. She's amazing. She is a fighter." The woman smiled.  
"You can be proud of the girl you raised." He nodded.  
"I was hardly around. My husband and I wanted to have kids -and I went through every treatment imaginable. She was the only child I didn't lose." She looked at Richard. "She was with me during my last miscarriage and my husband and I started to fight because he wanted more kids and – I guess she never felt like I was good enough- we lost each other in the process, we worked and she always tried to get attention, but we were so caught up in our pain that we didn't see hers. She was just a child and I want to live to make it up to her. Do you have kids?"  
"Yeah, I have a daughter." He nodded, even though he had never been a father to her, she was his daughter.  
"Are you proud of her?" she wondered.  
"I never met her and I only found out about her very recently." He admitted.  
"I'd say you have plenty to live for." She said "I messed up my first chance, now I'm getting a second one, maybe you are getting a first shot there."

* * *

"You paged. What do we have: an aneurysm or a massive spinal tumor?" "Scut?"  
"I'm trying Mer." Derek said and handed over a chart to her. "Amelia got the phillips grant. She's going to cure Alzheimer. Richard pitched a trial to me"  
Amelia intercepted him. "And oh, by the way,the,uh,soup of the day in the cafeteria is potato leek soup."  
"She got the grant? You are still doing the trial? - You are still yourself?" Meredith looked at Derek.  
"Yeah, you should have seen him 'dancing' in his office after I told him" Amelia giggled.  
"So the office doesn't consistitute as public?" Meredith looked at Derek.  
"Ugh?" blarred out with a confused look on her face.  
"He told me he never dances in public." Meredith explained to Derek's sister.  
"I wouldn't call it dancing anyway" Amelia teased her brother.  
"It's a neurosurgical trial and Amelia's going to be all over every major medical journal in the United States. Seattle Grace is a great hospital. They put down a little celebration at Joe's but I would much rather celebrate here with you." Derek explained "I have a few surgeries to sign off on."  
"I know that face, Derek, what do you want me to do?" Meredith wondered  
"I need you to do my post ops while Amy, Karev and I are going to insert the probe for the first." Derek said.  
"You can't be serious. Why am I not allowed to do this? I worked on your trial in Boston!" Meredith looked at Derek "I was the one that had the breakthrough"  
"You chose general" Derek said. "It'd be favouritism if I put you on that trial."  
"I haven't chosen a specialty" Meredith looked around for help "Can I at least watch?"  
"I don't want you anywhere near this trial." Derek said.  
"Why did you page me then?" Meredith wondered.  
"Because you know how to take care of all our post ops and he wanted to tell you something." Amelia excused herself. "I'm off to Joe's- celebrating the grant."  
After Meredith had left they looked at each other. Both of them had no clue what to say. "Here we are." Meredith mumbled.  
"Are you okay?" Derek wondered.  
"I'm fine Derek." Meredith said down on the sofa and looked at Derek again "What do you want me to do?" It was a universal question. One he could address as her boss or as her husband.  
"I want to go back to where we were two weeks ago." Derek said "I was Chief, we were happy"  
"Derek, I still had a miscarriage two weeks ago, it doesn't change a thing, I knew, you didn't." Meredith got up and looked at their family picture "Two weeks ago I was alone with the kids because Amelia had started working and you were at the hospital" After she had put the frame back onto the table, she looked at Derek with tear filled eyes.  
"I lost a child too, Meredith. I lost her too. -and it hurts." He whispered "I want to be great – I'm trying. You deserve great"  
"I… Derek… you aren't at home and… this is a lot…" Meredith looked at him and forbade herself to cry. "This is the fight we had last night and I know you are trying, but I know that I can't live with you… I feel like a nanny. I want to be with you. Figure out what you want, come back if you know. I'm here. I don't ask you to pick me. I'm still here and you are an excellent Chief, but tell me, does it make you happy?."

* * *

Anna woke up on George's bed and realized that she was late. She quickly jumped into the shower and started to get dressed. "This is getting annoying. I never know where I left my stuff, if I'm at your place I most certainly left it at mine and when you are at mine, I know it's at yours – and I haven't ever thrown out as much spoiled food as I have in the past two weeks".  
"You and Sophie could move in." George suggested while Anna ran through the apartment for a third time trying to find her clothes.  
"George, your apartment is tiny. And I'm not kidding, it's annoying. I need my blazer, I really need my blazer. I can't go there without it… they'd… I'm freaking out…" she rambled while trying to tie her hair to a knot "I have tons of clients coming in, they can't think I'm sort of lunatic…. They…"  
"well, we could buy a house or rent a house" George suggested "When the trial is over, we could…"  
"Or you could move in with me and Sophie –" and said without really thinking about what she was saying "and I can kick you out whenever you get annoying. Where is it? I'm freaking out…"  
"Anna, relax, you are going insane" George hugged her and forced her to rest.  
"if I don't find it soon." She tried to break free, but struggled because George was too strong.  
"You'd be fine with that? " He wondered.  
"Well, I mean I still have to figure out a few things, but who said that you couldn't do that with a cute guy in the house." She smiled and looked into his eyes "Sophie likes you. She likes you a lot and I know I'm screwed up, but I love you."  
"You love me." George repeated.  
"I said it. Oh my god, I said it and you are looking at me like…" Anna started to freak out. "like… I said it…"  
"You are rambling and…" George tried to calm her down.  
"and you don't say it and now you are looking at me like I'm a maniac and…" she said.  
"Anna, calm down." George tried to pull her close and kissed her forehead "I love you. I love you."

* * *

 _Actually, finding out that you've been looking at things all wrong can be sort of liberating. And suddenly you see a new potential where you've never seen it before. And that's all fine when a hopeless situation suddenly looks good. Unfortunately, some time it goes the other way._

* * *

Meredith was sitting on the swing on the front porch when Alex came home "What are you doing here again?" he asked and sat down next to her. They were looking at the night sky.  
"Reminising." Meredith sighed.  
"About what?" Alex wondered. He had had one of those days where everything had gone wrong.  
"Happier times?" she told him questiongly.  
"Let me tell you about that." Alex looked at Meredith "My brother went off his meds and attacked my mom with a knife – in front of my seventeen year old sister."  
"My husband is going to keep his damn Chief of surgery title . I really don't know what I'm moaning about" Meredith smiled at the irony. Under nearly the same circumstances their life could be perfect – it just wasn't.  
"Right? Why are you not out with Yang and Little Grey?" Alex wondered.

"Didn't feel like it! What about you?"  
"I have to drive to Iowa to get my brother admitted." Alex explained.  
"Richard is refusing treatment" Meredith said "He chose me as next of kin and now he's refusing treatment."  
"Too bad for him." Alex said "If he wants to waste the rest of his life like that."


	47. Chapter 47

**Long update ahead... I hope you enjoy it... some of the scenes were a lot of fun to write! As you are not getting an update next week (another out of town wedding), I decided to merge the next two chapters into one. I enjoyed writing the scenes with the kids a lot, so I hope you like them, they are getting older and are starting to develop their own personalities now (which we don't really see on-screen). So thanks for your reviews! I love to hear your thoughts!**

* * *

 **Chapter 4** 7

 _Our mind is strong, but sometimes it tells us that we can't go on. We suffer losses every day. But we quickly learn that the first order of business is to get the door back open, we can't stop just because of one loss but sometimes we need help. Sometimes it couldn't hurt to get a few experienced colleagues over here. Next...you have to try … get back to your happy place… Put the party back on... and print out some new invitations._

* * *

The living room was illuminated by the lamps Derek had chosen, but he hadn't been home in a while. Amelia and Meredith were sitting at the living room table and observed Zola and Christopher who were playing with their toy instruments while they caught up on the latest articles in some medical journals.  
"Look at them. Zola is examining Christopher." Amelia giggled.  
"They are so cute. Adorable. They are. Derek is missing out on so much." Meredith said "It's almost like he's gone and I'm never going to get him back"  
"He'll be there. What specialty are you going to choose? It's about time to pick a specialty and you are reading journal articles in about every specialty available." Amelia wondered as she looked at the huge pile of medical journals in front of Meredith.  
"Well, peds is general only on tiny humans, and trauma is general, only a little bit more messy." Meredith said "They are all general. All my life I felt like my mom was overshadowing me, now she's gone. If I choose neuro it's going to be like this forever because he's always going to be that hot shot neurosurgeon and I'm always going to be that love struck intern he fell in love with."  
"We could be Shepherd's little sister and Shepherd's wife." Amelia laughed. "I would have liked you to be on that trial, Derek told me that he didn't want you to be on that trial."  
"See, that's my point. I like neuro, I like the tumors, but most of the time you are clipping aneurysms or performing a basic craniotomy. The research for Dr. Springer and your trial are really interesting, but that's not what you do everyday. People would say it's not brain surgery, except it is, but it's boring stuff half the time and the rest of the time it's like diffusing a bomb."  
"But the tumors and the tranquility in the OR. You get this in no other specialty." Amelia said. "It's just you and that patient."  
"Did you pick neuro because of Derek?" Meredith wondered.  
Amelia mumbled at first, but managed to get out a proper response a short while later "I don't know. I always felt close to him. Ever since my dad got shot I felt like we have a special connection. We have been in this dark place together and nobody but us understands what it has been like to be there. If you stay quiet, you survive. That's what it's like in neuro. The patient lives if the volume keeps low, you survive if you don't make a wrong move"  
"I was quiet all my life. I never felt close to my mom, but when I step into that OR and do an appendectomy or fix hernias, I feel like I understand why she had to do the things she did." Meredith said. "She left my dad because she loved surgery more than him. She loved surgery more than anything. I get why she loved that intensity."  
"Maybe that's your speciality." Amelia said. "You don't have to pick neuro just because of him. I get that you can get addicted to the rush, the adrenaline pumping through your veins"  
"I never feel lonely when I'm in the OR, except when I'm with Derek. He's not home." Meredith said. "I just feel like he's alienating himself from me and from the kids. Don't get me wrong. I do love him, I do want to be with him, but I'm afraid that he's just going to leave one day. It feels like he left already. Do you know the last time he's been home?"  
"Judging by the way the living room looks, it must have been a while. We are not the tidiest people." Amelia giggled.  
"I guess we aren't." Meredith looked around. There were too many boxes of Asian food and pizza cartons, toys on the floor and used glasses on the table.

* * *

It was another night in an on call room for Derek. It was 1.00 am and the last ferry had left hours ago. He was lonely, but was happy to find George sitting in the room he had just walked into.  
"What are you worried about?" Derek wondered.  
"I…. I don't know." George said "Anna… it's all moving so fast and I feel like I finally have a shot at happiness and I want to ask her to marry me."  
"Why do you look so miserable?" Derek wondered.  
"Why do you look so miserable?" George asked the same.  
"I'm trying to love my job – and it's really hard." Derek laughed.  
"I… I want to buy her a ring." George said "But, I need money. I spend all of mine for mother's hospital bills and I'm already in more debt than I should ever be in."  
Derek told him to wait a minute and came back with a cheque. George looked up and looked at the $10.000 on the paper in front of him. "You don't have to do that. I can't take that" .  
"You are a friend" Derek said.  
"Are we?" George wondered.  
"You are Meredith's friend, so you are my friend. Just pay me back when you can." Derek said "I get it... when you can't give the person you love what she needs."

* * *

Meredith and Amelia stood in the kitchen looking at Christopher and Zola "Look at you, you are all grown up. You put on your shoes all by yourself." Amelia smiled at Christopher who looked up to his aunt..  
"Can help Zola do it." He smiled.  
"You can ask her if she needs help." Meredith insisted and looked at Zola who shook her head. But Christopher had already grabbed one of her boots and walked over to Zola. When he pushed her to the ground, Meredith quickly took him away from his sister. "Christopher Mark Shepherd, she doesn't want your help. Respect that!"  
"She not do it." He tried to defend his behaviour while Amy tried to console Zola.  
"She's going to learn it." Meredith smiled and looked at Zola "Do you want me to help you, Zo?"  
"No, no, no shoes." Zola said with snot around her nose.  
"But you need shoes, it's cold outside, honey." Amelia tried to suggest  
Zola yelled at them and shouted "No shoes." While throwing the boot across the hall.  
"She has to shoes wet rain." Christopher went back and picked it up.  
"Zola, I'm going to put your shoes on because we have to hurry." Amelia tried to persuade her niece.  
"No, dada do it, dada!" Zola insisted.  
"He's at the hospital if you put on your shoes we can go and meet him." Amelia tried to sweettalk her into submitting to their will.  
When this proved ineffective, Meredith used a harsher tone and told her "Shoes, Zo."  
"No shoes, no shoes, dada shoes." She threw a tantrum. Meredith and Amelia exchanged a look. They both knew that Derek had hardly been at the house since becoming Chief. It was too far away from the hospital.  
"Daddy is waiting for you at daycare honey." Amelia tried to knee down.  
"No, he away lots. Want he here." Zola looked at them. Meredith sighed. It was all she wanted, but unfortunately due to her age throwing a tantrum at the hospital wasn't an option.  
"Zola, I don't have time to discuss this. You'll sit down here and I'll put your shoes on now!" Meredith yelled with tears in her eyes. She never wanted to be that person.  
"No mad, mama" Christopher pulled down her jacket a little bit and tried to cheer her up.  
"It's fine, Christopher, it's fine." She smiled. It was just harder than she had expected.

* * *

After they had arrived at the hospital a little later than usual, Amelia finally got to meet the first patient in the trial Derek had pushed on her. He had chosen the topic, thought of the technique and established the contract with the pharmathetical company that provided the drug they used. She looked at the woman in her thirty's that had just completed the last baseline test. "Ms. You give me that new wonder drug of yours, I'll be even better." The woman smiled after Amy complimented her on her performance.  
"Well, if it came down to how much I like the patient, you'd be a shoo-in." Amelia smiled.  
"Now if Daniele gets the drug, how soon will she stop slipping in and out of things?" the husband wondered.  
"Well, at this stage, we don't know any more than you do, Mr. Cobb. That's why we're going to do a 2-year follow-up." Amelia smiled.  
"But the idea is that her condition could be reversed all together, is that completely out of the question? Because I-I just read - that when the drug was used on rats and monkeys - Mm-hmm." The husband tried to hold on to that hope.  
"There was some reversal in tissue damage." Amelia said, but April who was acting as a stand in for Alex interrupted her. "That's rats and monkeys. It could be different for humans."  
"Well, I don't want to rule out a reversal altogether. But right now, we're trying to stop the progression." Amelia said. "All right, Dr. Kepner is going to take you down for an M.R.I. later, so if you have any more questions today, page him."  
"I'm feeling better already, Dr. Shepherd." The woman smiled.

* * *

In the meantime, Callie sat down on Dr. Wyatt's couch. It was time for another one of her weekly counselling sessions.  
"Dr. Torres, hello." The therapist said. They had done this week after week for the past few months. "what do you want to talk about?"  
"I don't know." Callie said. They had talked about going back to work last time.  
"What about the accident?" Dr. Wyatt wondered.  
"I'm tired of talking about it" Callie sighed, but knew that Dr. Wyatt actually wanted a response "How do I feel about it? Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. How would you feel about being asked about it two times a week?"  
"This isn't about me and I don't feel like you are opening up to it." The therapist said "You can tell me anything."  
"Okay, it's been weeks since I've been discharged, months since it happened. I feel stuck in time because I still have to come here and talk about it over and over again. It was an accident. I learned to live with it." Callie insisted. "I'm fine."  
"Why do you keep referring to it as accident?" she wondered.  
"Fine, I was assaulted. I had no control over it and I was beaten up and that guy tried to rape me and pushed me in front of a car so he could get away due to the distraction when I tried to fight him off. That's what you want me to say, isn't it? I had no control over what happened. I'm the victim of an assault!" Tears ran down her face. She was losing control again.  
"So you like to see you as someone who is in control?" Dr. Wyatt kept pushing. This was the break through they had been working towards for weeks.  
"Yeah, I'm a surgeon, I like to be in control." Callie nodded.  
"What about your personal life, do you feel in control there?"  
"I was married… my husband… he was the nicest person you could think of… and he cheated on me… and then I got so occupied with my personal life that I fucked up being Chief resident and I got fired and …" Callie rambled "when I met Arizona… she just left and… no…. I'm very much not in control. I'm not even in control of my daughter!"  
"Why do you think so?" Dr. Wyatt wondered. She had tried to bring up Sofia before, but Callie had refused to talk about her feelings most of the times.  
"She's crying and she keeps crying and I don't know what to do." Callie said "I look at her and I don't know what to do."  
"She's a baby. Babies do cry and it neither makes you a bad mother nor is a sign of not being in control. How have you dealt with her so far?" she wondered.  
"I haven't" Callie admitted and realized that this was the reason George was taking her to court "George has and Arizona – and Meredith, Alex and Lexie. Everyone took care of her when I couldn't. I don't want to talk about her."  
"Let's focus on Sofia though. Why did you choose to do IVF without talking to Arizona?"  
"I always wanted to be a mom. I knew that I could do it on my own." Callie said.  
"This belief is essential to your feeling of not being in control. Being in control doesn't mean you have to do it on your own."

* * *

A rich patient's nose had brought Mark back to Seattle- at least this was the story Mark had told everyone. Every resident interested in plastic surgery was watching from the gallery to see the famous surgeon and his infamous technique that hardly left any scaring. The residents he had requested to scrub in with him seemed less eager to exploit this opportunity.  
"Dad liked you" Lexie said. "But he has a girlfriend who is my age, so I'd say he wouldn't be entitled to an opinion anyway."  
"That wasn't so bad" Jackson admitted."My family will be an entirely different story altogether."  
"Come on, you offered to pay for a ticket to Bahrain to see Molly the last time your mother threatened to visit." Lexie giggled. While Mark continued his work on the patient.  
"My mom is a whole different story." Jackson defended his decision.  
"Why Avery?" Mark looked up.  
"Because she… she's everywhere… she has demands that are impossible to meet…" Jackson rambled.  
"Can't we focus on this beautiful rhinoplasty, Dr. Avery?" Mark wondered "I really don't care if your mom likes your girlfriend. Look at what I'm doing here or get out of my OR."

* * *

The residents were sitting at a lunch table in the cafeteria when Cristina noticed that Alex was missing. "Where's Alex?" she wondered.  
"He's was in Iowa for the weekend. His flight got here 90 minutes ago, he should be here in a sec. He was taking care of family business. Something with his brother. I can't tell you more." Meredith explained.  
"Alex has a brother?" Jackson wondered. There was not much he knew about his friends it seemed.  
"And a sister." Meredith nodded.  
"He never mentioned them." Jackson said.  
"Derek never mentioned that the board offered Chief to him permanently." Meredith suggested.  
"Shepherd is the new permanent Chief?" Cristina asked in shock.  
"Yeah, and a permanent asshole. I freaked out this morning and it's Derek's fault." Meredith said "Zola was throwing a fit and I was yelling. I never wanted to be that kind of mom."  
"What has Shepherd done this time?" Cristina wondered.  
"Nothing. He's doing nothing. He's indifferent and he isn't coming home and the kids… the fit…Zola threw a fit because she wanted him to put on her shoes and I yelled at her and she started to cry because she was scared of me."  
"He hasn't been home?" Lexie wondered.  
"Not in a while. It's like something is broken and ever since I got fired…" Meredith looked at all of them "I just don't know what to do Lex."  
"Talk to him. You need to talk to him about how you feel, that you can't keep going like this. He's an ass." Lexie said  
"Yah, Shepherd is an ass. We all know…" Cristina agreed.  
"What's the matter with you?" Lexie wondered "Have they decided to close the cardio department?"  
"Men suck, they only complicate our life. That's what's the matter with her." Meredith said. She knew that Cristina didn't want to discuss her recent fight with Owen in front of everyone.  
"I'm getting out of her. All this negativity isn't good." Lexie looked at Jackson who got up with her.  
After everyone but Cristina and Meredith had left, Cristina looked at Meredith "The Shepherdess wants to cure Alzheimer. Any chance Ellis was the reason he started to develop an interest in that area and pushed it on her?" she wondered.  
"I don't know… maybe Derek found the results of my genetic screening and pitched that idea to her. They checked me out when I was in med school, when my mother was first diagnosed." Meredith explained. This letter had been sitting in her desk for years.  
"You tested positive?" Cristina wondered.  
"I never opened the envelope, but I assume. I mean, look at my mom, what are the odds? Why would I be any different. I assume I mean ever since Derek looked at it he's on his crazy mission to cure death. Promise me to shot me before I turn into a potato." Meredith looked at Cristina.  
"Sure." Cristina nodded and took another bite of salad.  
"No second guessing? No questions asked?" Meredith wondered surprised.  
"Accident or suicide?" Cristina wondered. "No seriously. I do understand, Mer. No second guessing!"

* * *

Meredith's lunch was cut short by a page to the oncology department "Chief. You paged?" she looked at the man who was lying in bed reading one of her mother's journals.  
"How's it going?" Richard wondered "You don't look happy."  
"Fine, I'm fine. Derek is busy with being Chief, Amelia with her Alzheimer trial and I haven't really seen him in days, but my kids are great and I love my job. I have a few more consults today, but what's up?" Meredith said. She was curious what he wanted. He had refused to discuss his treatment plan with her.  
"Meredith I would like to initiate a clinical trial." He said. Meredith had to force herself not to roll her eyes. He wasn't in the position to be involved in a clinical trial "One that would be the next major advancement in the fight to cure type 1 diabetes."  
"Wow. Shouldn't you be…" Meredith tried to persuade him to seek treatment again, but was interrupted by her former mentor "And I'd like you to participate. Dr. Bailey is going to be responsible for the trial, but it's your mother's idea."  
"But I have two kids to look after and with Derek's position, I don't think I can do both." Meredith said.  
"Just listen. The basis of this trial was something that I found in here." He said and showed her one of her mother's journals.  
"In my mother's journals?" Meredith asked in surprise. The date was around the time Meredith had left for Europe.  
"Yes. She was working on islet cell transplantation when she became ill, trying to eliminate the need for anti-rejection meds altogether" he explained "It's remarkable. W-with her notes, drugs, and new technology, there's no way we can't take this the rest of the way down the field."  
"We?" Meredith wondered. "I should hate you, you messed up my career, my marriage and you named me as your next of kin, but refuse treatment. Dr. Webber, this is confusing."  
"Well, it's your mother's work" he smiled "I wouldn't feel right moving forward if you weren't a part of it. You should do them both- or just do the one you want. Just think about it. It's your decision. It's your birthright, Meredith. It's your mother's legacy to you"

* * *

On her way back to the surgical ward, Meredith noticed that Alex was prepping one of the patients for the trial "How long are you going to be in there?" the daughter wondered.  
"Oh, I've gotta put on a localizing frame." Alex said, but the wife seemed unsatisfied by the answer.  
"At least an hour." Meredith said observing Alex from the door.  
"- An hour? –" the wife looked at Alex.  
"Yeah, give or take." Meredith came closer to Alex and the patient.  
" wants me to be as thorough as possible." He said when the patient suddenly started to yell. "No! I'm not doing this without my wife."  
Alex and Meredith exchanged a look "Sir. - No! Mr. Cobb, your wife is right here." Alex tried to calm him down, but the man didn't seem to recognize the woman in front of him.  
"That's not my wife.-" the man yelled.  
"Mr. Cobb. Look, it's your wife." Alex tried to persuade him.  
"That's not Victoria." He insisted.  
"Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.- Daniel, it's me. It's Allison. –" the wife said softly.  
"You're not Victoria." The man cried. "You aren't."  
"It's Allison." The woman smiled, but her husband get increasingly more agitated. "You're you're not my wife. You're not Victoria.- I want Victoria. I want my wife.- Get away from me!"  
"Sir, who is your wife?" Meredith asked.  
"I don't know. I don't know." He cried. "I told you. It's Victoria. I want Victoria."  
"Is she here?" Meredith asked carefully again.  
"No." he shook his head.  
Meredith looked at the wife and asked "Do you know where she is?"  
"I don't - I don't I don't know. I don't I don't know." The man yelled.  
Meredith took his hand and promised " Okay, okay. I Well, I'm going to go find Victoria for you, okay? I'm going to go look for her. I'm going to find her and bring her to you. You sit tight. I'll find Victoria.

Alex, Meredith and his wife walked out the door. Meredith looked at her while a black man approached them "Do you know who Victoria is?"  
"Victoria is the woman he loves." The woman answered with teary eyes "They met at the home last year. One day he asked me to wheel her towards him. And that was it. I watched him fall in love with her. Well, Ben and I watched."  
"You're Victoria's husband?" Meredith wondered.  
"Until she leaves me." He nodded.  
"Oh, she's not going to leave you, Ben." The wife smiled.  
"We'll see. Victoria was diagnosed with vascular dementia. It's not Alzheimer's, but it might as well be. She's like Daniel. When she's lucid, she knows I'm her husband. When she's not I go from being her husband to, uh, somebody that gets to hear about Daniel all the time." He said with a sigh.  
"Daniel can still be in the trial, can't he?" the woman begged "This doesn't mean he can't do it? No, he can still do it."  
"The rule for the study is, uh, we need his consent. Once we have it, it's okay if he's not always lucid." Alex explained.  
"You don't have any more openings, do you?" the man who had approached them wondered.  
"Unfortunately, the trial is only for Alzheimer's dementia." Alex answered apologetic.  
"There's no chance?" he asked again.  
"I'm sorry." Alex smiled.

* * *

In the scrub room Lexie looked at Mark. "how long are you going to be here for? Derek hasn't mentioned anything."  
"I decided to move back. So you introduced Jackson to your dad? Must be getting pretty serious." Mark noted.  
Lexie looked down at her hands "Oh, I don't know." She smiled "What about Maria?"

"We figured something out, we are going to split time and when she's in school, I'll get the holidays and the summer" he explained.  
"And you can live with that." Lexie looked at Mark's face looking for an answer.  
"I tried to fit in in L.A, but it didn't work. Plus I walked into Addy having sex with her new partner." Mark said "I walked into our house and noticed a jacket that wasn't mine – and her heels were on the stairs and then I saw them – in the throws."  
"Wow." Lexie blarred out.  
"Fertility specialist." Mark smirked.

* * *

When Meredith got out of her last surgery for the day, she saw Derek who was starting to scrub in for a spinal fixation with Callie. "Derek, we need to talk." She said and looked at him.  
"I don't have time to talk. I'm running into three back to back surgeries." He said and went into the OR.  
"Derek" Meredith said. As she wasn't scrubbed out yet, she followed him.  
"Haven't you heard what I said? I'm sure you have patients to take care of. Or maybe you want to run off to Boston again?" he shot at her.  
"What's the matter with you? Is this about the conversation last night?" she wondered.  
"Christopher said he hates me" Derek told her "My son said he hates me when I visited the kids in daycare this morning. Any chance you can explain why he would say something like this?"  
Meredith looked shocked and was surprised that Derek would think this was her fault. "It wasn't my fault. But don't you think your son is interested in finding out why I'm the only parent that takes him home He's missing you. The kids are missing you."  
"I have a job." He yelled.  
"So have I. You should spend more time with the kids. They really missed you." Meredith said calmly "Your mother called, she was asking for flight details. You haven't told me that your family is coming over for Christmas."  
"Shit, I forgot about that" he said "I have to go."

* * *

When she left the hospital Meredith noticed that Alex was sitting on a bench in front of the hospital "Day one, and this thing already blows. You got one guy begging us to get his wife in the trial, then this other guy's wife wants me to steal the drug for her husband."  
"Well, you're the one who wanted in on the trial of the century" Meredith reminded him.  
"Yeah, but with peds, the problem's right in front of you. I mean, sick kid, worried parents. Here, you you've got a sick parent who doesn't even know they're sick." Alex looked at Meredith.  
"Well, about five years ago, I was visiting my mother. And she starts telling me how she thinks she's got herpes and how she doesn't want to go to the hospital and get checked out because she's afraid everybody will know." Meredith laughed "So I realize that she thinks I'm her best friend from med school, and it's 35 years ago. So I had to just sit there and talk to my mother about her possible herpes for two hours, two very long hours. I couldn't cure her Alzheimer's, but at least I could give her what she needed in that moment".  
"Advice about herpes?" Alex wondered.  
"Advice about herpes." Meredith nodded and got up. Maybe that was just what she and Derek needed.

* * *

In the middle of the night Derek and Mark finally got to discuss the details of Mark's new contract. It was a two year contract that provided mark with the freedom he needed for his frequent trips to LA. It was the concession Derek made to his old friend that reminded him of how seldom he had seen his kids throughout the past weeks.  
He sat down and poured a glass of Whiskey for both of them. Meredith was home with the kids, Amelia was on call and probably trying to get a bit of sleep in an on call room.  
"I'm off tomorrow. You can come with me if you want to" Derek suggested to his old friend.  
"Where are you going?" Mark wondered.  
"The zoo. Christopher and Zola love to watch the sea lions." Derek smiled. "I have to get out of here for once."  
"What about Meredith?" Mark wondered.  
"She's in surgery. I don't want her to miss a robotic surgery. She has practiced for two weeks just to be allowed to operate the robot Bailey told me. I want her to do that surgery." Derek said.  
"What about keeping her away from Amy's trial?" Mark looked at Derek. After the work she had done on his brain mapping trial they both knew that she would have been the best suited candidate.  
"It's for the better." Derek said.  
"You have to stop looking at her as your wife." Mark said "at work. You have to start seeing her as such at home."  
"You aren't the person who can tell me anything about leaving your family behind," Derek looked at Mark "You are back here.-away from your daughter-I know friends are not supposed to ask, but Mark, why are you here?"  
"Fine, I get it, you think I should be with Addison and Maria, but Derek let me tell you this: Addison cheated on me. I walked in on her. It must have been like you had felt. That's why I'm here and that's why I'm looking for a job."  
"Why Seattle?" Derek wondered.  
"I have a thing for ferryboats." Mark smirked. "and once you finally admit that you hate being Chief, things will be easier."

* * *

Before scrubing in, Meredith walked into Richard's room. He was still expecting an answer and she still wanted to persuade him to start on a treatment plan Bailey and she had put together. "Richard, it's an amazing offer." She said.  
"It's not an offer, Meredith. I can't offer something that doesn't belong to me. It was your mother's work, and it's only right that you continue it." Richard said. "It's her legacy."  
"I, um So you think that I owe it to her?" Meredith wondered.  
"Honestly? I think she owes it to you." Richard said "She didn't give you a lot of love, but she gave you her talent and her name- And this. This gift could change the course of your career."  
"I have to get back to my post ops" Meredith lied.  
"Meredith It might change the way you think about her. It could be the greatest thing the both of you ever did." Richard said. "I don't want you to remember her the way you do."  
"And I don't want you to remember her the way you do either." Meredith said "If you want to meet your child, you have to start this treatment plan. I'll think about it."

* * *

Before Derek was paged to another surgery, he did what he had wanted to do for weeks, he had checked out the kids at daycare and walked out of the hospital with them. The air was cold and he was hoping to find Zola's coat in Meredith's car. "So, Zola, Christopher and daddy are going to watch the sea lions at the zoo, are you excited?" he asked the kids when he placed them into their car seats.  
"Sea linens and giraffes. Zola go giraffe." Zola smiled, but Christopher seemed to ignore him.  
"Fine, we can go and watch the giraffes too." He smiled and kissed Zola's cheek before closing the door on her side. He walked around the car and looked at his son "What about you Chris?"  
"No talk to you. You make mommy cry. I hate you." Christopher looked at him.  
Tears started to build up in Derek's eyes. His son had said he hated him – he probably didn't mean it, but it hurt.  
"Daddy cry, Christopher." Zola looked at her brother.  
"Don't care. He don't care about I. He never there." The boy said. "You don't care."  
"Shut up, shut up! Both of you." Derek said with a teary voice. "You can't say something like this to your parents. I'm trying. I love you. I love both of you."  
"Why you never there? Why you never home? You do if love us." Christopher said "We miss you"  
"Mommy's fault, she yell if daddy home." Zola said "She hates him. She hates us. Yells."  
"Mommy doesn't hate you, or me." Derek tried to persuade Zola. He was heartbroken about what both kids had said in the past few minutes. "She has a very demanding job and she tries to do her best. We all try to do our best."  
"Uncle Alex hugs mommy if sad." Christopher mumbled "Stays at house and reads stories. He loves us."

As they were driving during rush hour, it was a 45 minute drive and Zola was asleep again when they arrived, but quickly woke up and got out of the car seat. Christopher was a whole other story. He started yelling and screaming and crying whenever Derek tried to touch him. He told him that he wanted his mama to be there and people at the parking lot had started to look at them. One women had even tried to talk Christopher out of that car, but the boy was very stubborn. An hour later Derek decided to call Meredith. She parked her car next to his and got out.  
"Can't you even manage to take them to the zoo, Derek? I was in surgery." Meredith looked at him after she had said hello to Zola.  
"Your son refuses to get out of his car seat unless you get him out" Derek said and added "or uncle Alex can do it because apparently he's so much better at all of this than I am. Care to explain?"  
"Jealous because Alex stepped in when you stopped showing up?" Meredith looked at Derek. "We are friends and I need help Derek."  
"Don't yell! No scream!" Zola said and covered her ears.  
"Mommy, daddy no algue." Christopher said when they opened the door.  
"Daddy, kiss." Zola smiled.  
"You want a kiss young lady?" Derek asked with that flirtatious voice Meredith had fallen in love with.  
"No, kiss mommy." Zola smiled again and looked at their brother.  
"They did all of this to get us into one place. They are two and they play us." Meredith smiled and looked at Derek "Can you imagine?"  
"Well, they do have my intelligence and wit." Derek chuckled.  
"You really like yourself, ugh?" Meredith giggled. Somehow she had forgiven him that he had paged her to leave her first robotic surgery.  
"I think we have to" He looked at the two kids and Meredith.  
"Have to?" Meredith looked at him. She really wanted to kiss him.  
"Your daughter demands it." He said, but couldn't wait for his lips to touch hers.  
"Kiss and zoo." Zola smiled and clapped with her hands while Meredith and Derek engaged in a passionate kiss.  
"I can't come to the zoo with you honey, I have to get back to the hospital." Meredith kneed down and hugged Zola "You and daddy have fun."  
"But you here…"Zola said.  
"You go to zoo with me, no daddy." Christopher demanded.  
"Are you going to the zoo with daddy if I promise you that we are going to have dinner together?" Meredith told Christopher and lifted him out of his car seat. "All of us?"  
"No, you take me zoo." Christopher said.  
"Christopher, why don't you want to go with daddy?" Meredith wondered.  
"Daddy bad daddy. Never around." The boy mumbled  
"But he wants to be there for you now. He wants to take you to the zoo. Promise mommy to go with daddy, be a good boy for mommy." Meredith whispered into his ear "Sometimes people take some time to come around, but you should give them the opportunity to let them show you that they are trying to make things up to you."  
The boy nodded.

"Thank you" Derek said with a smile after Meredith had said goodbye to the kids.  
"I didn't do anything. Our kids blackmailed us into kissing." Meredith smiled "Anyway, let's meet for dinner at 7.30pm. I'll try to cook something."  
"I'll see if I can make it." Derek nodded.  
"We owe it to the kids. Be there. I promised them." Meredith said.  
"You did." Derek said. "It's something you promised."  
"Come on, that's not fair." Meredith said "We should start acting like a team again."  
"I'll do my best" Derek said.

* * *

After Meredith had gotten back to the hospital, she decided to check on Richard. The surgery was still going on, so her responsibilities for now were rather light. She knocked on his door and saw that he was still reading Ellis' diaries. "You know, I had forgotten this about your mother. She wrote everything down. She didn't have a thought or a fragment of a thought that didn't get scribbled in some journal. - She was compulsive." He said.  
"Lucky for you that she did." Meredith nodded.  
"Lucky for both of us." He corrected her.  
"No, for you. You knew the woman who wrote them. That's why I gave them to you." Meredith smiled "I was happy to read them and to understand her better, but the woman I knew was different. But I am starting to realize how scared she must have been. That had to be why she was writing everything down. She must have been so scared."  
"Meredith, I So please, go ahead. I think it's right that you continue her work." Richard said.  
"But don't you think it's better if I want to cure her disease?" Meredith wondered. "Derek doesn't want me anywhere near his trial, but I want to do it"  
"her disease?" Richard wondered "44 million people have Alzheimer. 5.3 in the US"  
"I see how scared Derek is because there's a good chance that I'll have it and I see how worked up he is." Meredith let out a laugh "He bullied his sister into conducting a trial for him. I see how scared she was and how scared Derek is and I knew what it was like for me."  
"Think about it." Richard said.

* * *

The rest of the day passed by quickly. Derek had dropped off the kids at 3.00pm and Meredith had taken them home at 5.00pm. She had played with the kids and prepared dinner when she heard a rattle on the door knob. "You made it." Meredith smiled and looked at Derek.  
"I said I would do my best." Derek smiled.  
"I made dinner. Zola's favorite. Chicken fingers & carrots. How many do you want, Zo?" Meredith wondered.  
"Four." Zola said with a big smile.  
"You will never ever eat four, you are not big enough to eat four" Meredith said.  
"But I'm two old. That's big." She corrected her.  
"I'll give you two and you can have another two later if you are still hungry." Meredith insisted.  
"I can feed you, Zola. The spaceship will take off again." Derek offered.  
"No need help. Fork it. Zola big." Zola smiled and Derek realised that he had been absent for too long.  
"She started eating by herself ten days ago. She refuses any help. Let her do it by herself." Meredith explained.  
"I… I didn't know." Derek stuttered.  
"I know Derek, it's okay." Meredith bit her lips.  
"Carrot mash." Christopher yelled and lifted up his spoon only to let everything fall back into the plate again.  
"Don't play with your food Christopher." Derek looked at the boy.

They had finished dinner and put the kids to bed before they sat down on the couch "They are really acting out. The whole situation is getting to them." Meredith sighed. "First Boston, now your job"  
"I wish I had more time." Derek sighed.  
"Make it. How's the study going?" Meredith wondered.  
"I'm not talking about the study with you. Neither one" he said "Amy and Alex are taking care of the paper work right now and monitoring the patients that are coming in next week -and Dr. Springer and I are moving on to the next stage".  
"Yeah, she is. So when do you think you…" Meredith tried to ask again.  
"I'm not talking about the study with you, Meredith. It's Amelia's project." Derek said.  
"It was your idea Derek and you told her not to talk about it with me" Meredith said "When did this happen? At which point in time did we stop to talk about our life to each other?"  
"We are talking about our life, I just don't want to talk about the Alzheimer trial with you. You are not ready. Not when you don't bring it upon yourself to open that letter in six years."  
Meredith was surprised that Derek knew about the letter. "Has Cristina talked to you? Derek, it doesn't matter. It won't change a thing. If I have inherited the genes it means that there's a chance, but it doesn't matter right now. I'm perfectly healthy and I'm missing my husband and my kids are missing their dad. Derek, if you don't acknowledge the fact that you withdrew yourself from our lives, we are in trouble." Meredith said "We are in trouble."  
"No, you are not noticing that I'm doing my job and that I'm doing this for you." Derek said angry and got up.  
"You are abandoning me to help me? Do you think it's good for the kids not to see their father at home? Do you think they are acting out because I'm a bad mother, no they are acting out because you are never around." Meredith yelled "The kids don't deserve it, I don't deserve it. Do you think it's easy to explain to them? You are doing this for yourself and your reputation!"  
"I'll try Meredith, it's not easy, but I'll try" Derek promised.  
"About that letter, I'll open it when I'm ready" Meredith said.

* * *

Next day

"Assignments – and I want to remind you that you have to choose a specialty during the next few months. It's an important decision, it will set you on a path for the rest of your career." Owen said "Some of you might know it already, but for those of you who are still unsure, it's time to make a decision."  
"Yay, gallstones for me." Meredith mumbled without looking at the list. She had been working with Bailey a lot since her return.  
"Ortho, yeah" April smiled.  
"No, someone requested you in neuro, Mer." Cristina said after she took a look at the list.  
"Tell me it's Amelia" Meredith begged. Derek had slept on the couch.  
"No." Cristina smirked "It's you and McDreamy and patient Nr. 54037 on Amelia's trial."  
"He wants us to spend more time together. He left a note in the kitchen telling me he wants to spend more time" Meredith sighed.  
"Poking around in someones brain certainly sounds like date night…" Cristina said and looked at Owen who was standing at the door.  
"I guess that's what you get for kissing him again." Meredith looked at the plan again.

Derek joined Alex and Amelia during rounds. "Honey? Hi. How you feelin'?" Mr. Cobb's wife wondered.  
"Oh, I'm okay. I've got a slight headache. Where's my Victoria? Can I see her?" the man looked at them.  
"Mrs. Cobb, he just came out of surgery. Look, this doesn't mean it's not going to work" Alex looked at the wife "W-we won't know that for a while. When he acts like this, you just need to tell yourself, this is not your husband. But he is somebody who needs your help. So whatever you can give him Daniel I'm going to call Victoria and get her here as soon as I can. Okay?"  
"Thank you." The woman nodded.  
"Karev. I couldn't have done it any better myself. You reassured her. You got her to focus on what was important." Derek congratulated him.  
Alex looked at both Shepherds and handed over the charts to Amelia "Ah, I'm off the trial."  
"What?" Amelia asked in shock.  
"It's too depressing.- I can't handle this for the next two years." He said.  
"You just handled it." Derek reminded him.  
"No, that was Meredith talking. She told me what to say." Alex explained to both of them "She's been saving my ass. You need to get over this thing where you're just thinking of her as your wife, because your wife is the only person twisted enough to handle this crap."

* * *

Mark was standing in the OR. It was awful quiet. Avery was looking at him nervously. "You have to get chattier with me, small talk Avery." Mark encouraged him.  
"I don't really know what to talk about." Jackson admitted "There's not so much going on in my life."  
"So when are you going to propose now that you met the family?" Mark wondered.  
"I'm not planning on proposing." Jackson said "Not yet anyway."  
Mark nodded "Oh, that's good I guess. You are still both pretty young, don't know what you want yet."  
"I… I guess you are right." Jackson nodded.  
"She'd love something small, not too public."Mark said "You should ask her dad for permission, they might be a little estranged, but I think she'd like it like that."  
"You seem to know more about her than I do."

* * *

"Injecting a modified virus into the brain has never been more fun. Let's go in." Amelia smiled as they walked along the hall.  
" John Driscoll, white male, 62, Alzheimer's diagnosed eight months ago. Patient number twenty one of Alzheimer's NGF clinical trial." An intern filled in the rest when Derek and Meredith approached their group.  
"Did you say John Driscoll?" Meredith looked at the intern.  
"You know him?" Derek wondered.  
"Yes, he was one of my lecturers at university. He has two Ph.D.s and an MD. He was brilliant." Meredith said. "He encouraged me to apply to med school."  
"You can…" Derek tried to offer her an out.  
"I'm fine Derek, thank you" Meredith nodded..  
"Let's go." Amelia said and they all walked into the room.

"What are you doing here? Derek told you to stay away." Amelia whispered to Meredith "What did you do to change his mind?"  
"I don't know" Meredith whispered, but they were interrupted by their patient.  
"Meredith, please don't bother me now, come back during office hours." Meredith's old professor said.  
"You know him?" John Driscoll's daughter wondered.  
"Yes, he was one of my teachers at Dartmouth. I'm really sorry." Meredith said apologetic.  
"I'm Dr. Amelia Shepherd, I'm leading the trial. Nice to meet you." Amelia said.  
"Nice to meet you." The daughter said "I was surprised you called so early."  
"We are going to take your father to surgery today. We'll open his skull and insert a probe." Amelia explained.  
"There's a chance he's going to get better afterwards, isn't there?" the daughter wondered.  
"We are only at the start. Animal studies looked promising, but there's no way of knowing how this is going to affect humans." Amelia said "There's no way to know."  
"Your dad had a heart attack eight years ago." Meredith said all of a sudden. "You haven't listed this on your patient information."  
"There haven't been any abnormalities when we examined the patient." The intern said.  
"Is that true?" Derek wondered and looked at the daughter.  
"Yeah" she nodded.  
"In that case we can't allow his participation at all." Amelia said "I'm really sorry."

* * *

Meredith and Cristina sat in the cafeteria. Due to Meredith's cancelled surgery, it had been a slow day. Ten minutes into Meredith's monologue about which trial she'd want to work at, Cristina interrupted her "Alzheimer's or diabetes? If you continue to whine about how you can't decide which groundbreaking medical advancement to put your name on, I'll punch you in the face." Cristina muttered.  
"Last week you moaned over Derek's lack of care for your kids." Lexie said.  
"Well, my name's already on one of them, according to the chief. I mean, - diabetes - Affects 240 million people worldwide. - And Alzheimer's –" Meredith paused  
"Is the seventh leading cause of death. It's "Sophie's choice."" Cristina added.  
"Uh-huh - I've never seen that movie." Meredith said.  
"- Oh, you should. It's really funny." Lexie suggested.  
"What am I supposed to do, Lex?" Meredith wondered.  
"Well, that's up to you. What do you want Meredith?" Lexie wondered and got up.

After lunch Meredith had to prepare for an interview of another potential candidate for the trial. Cristina came along as she had no scheduled surgery. "So if I'm going to do this, then you know what? I'm going to have a voice." Meredith said and showed Ellis' diary to Cristina.  
"Oh, god. That's good. Holy crap. Your mom was smart." Cristina said a few minutes later.  
"Truck. Cabin. Spoon. Crap. This is so good." Meredith said when she looked at the questionnaire.  
"Is it better than this? 'Cause seriously, Mer, you'd have to have died of Alzheimer's to fail this." Cristina said.  
"I don't even know if I'm doing it yet. I mean I thought about my specialty and I think I want to be a general surgeon, that's weird isn't it?" Meredith said. "I want to be like her."  
"You have to. Mother-daughter surgeons cure leading killer? I mean, I'm still jealous, and I'm doing a heart transplant on a baby that hasn't even been born yet." Cristina said.

During the second part of the interview Meredith looked at the woman "I don't know." The woman said and tried to remember.  
"It's okay. Take your time" Meredith nodded. The words she was supposed to remember were easy, but she couldn't think of the third.  
"Truck. Cabin." She repeated for a third time. The daughter looked at Meredith and turned to the mother "Remember the third word, mom? We should've come earlier. She has a harder time in the evenings."  
"She's doing fine. We're just running some tests." Meredith tried to calm the daughter down.  
"It's "Spoon," Mom. Remember, "Spoon"?" the daughter looked at her mother.  
"I don't know why we're here. Why are we here?" the woman looked helplessly at her daughter.  
"It's such a little word." The daughter said.  
"Can we go home now?" the woman wondered. The daughter looked at Meredith, who nodded.  
"Okay, mom. Okay." They left the room.

After Meredith had left the interview room Amelia and Derek were waiting for her "Meredith, the next trial patient is coming tomorrow. You are in." Amelia said.  
"I can't be -and I don't want to. It might be my mother's disease, but she had build a legacy and I want to continue it." Meredith said.  
"Why? This morning you were all over me trying to tell me how badly you want to be in that trial" Amelia wondered.  
"And now I'm not. Alex quit and you come to me." Meredith told Amelia and looked at Derek "I did so much work during our glioma trial, I would have thought that you come to me first and Richard and Bailey offered me to take part on a diabetes trial based on my mom's research and I really think about doing it."  
"Richard is dying." Derek said.  
"Don't you dare to say that. I'll get him to agree to that treatment." Meredith was sure she would.  
"Meredith, he knows he's dying. He told me." Derek insisted.  
"He wants to die. And he told me that it's one way to honor my mom's legacy." Meredith smiled "It's the last thing she did before she was diagnosed."  
"and I don't want it to be the last thing you do before you are diagnosed." He yelled. Amelia looked irritated.  
"So you want me to work with you to keep an eye on me?" Meredith laughed sarcastically "Amy, this isn't your fault. I'm not Zola or Christopher or one of your patients, I don't need supervision. You see Alzheimer patients every day, all you see is Alzheimer and you are scared. But I can assure you that I'm fine."  
"You know Amy and I are doing this to cure your disease." Derek insisted.  
"It's not my disease. I don't have Alzheimer." Meredith got defensive.  
"Not yet." Derek mumbled.  
"So you think that it's only a matter of time until I get it." Meredith looked shocked and Derek looked down. "Look at me Derek and answer my question. I can't have you be afraid because of me. I don't want you to do this because of me. I want you to do this because you want to help. If you want to look out for me, work is not the place to do it, come home, buy groceries, massage me, spend time with the kids, that's helping me. Promise me that you are going to look after our children if I ever get it, promise me that you are going to look after me. I love you, but I can't be in this with you. You'll have to find somebody else."  
"But, you know what to tell the patients, you know how to interact with the families, you…" Amelia tried to persuade her "You are great with them!"  
"Derek, I know because I've been through all of this with my mom. I know what it's like. It's lonely and miserable. And right now I feel lonely too. I feel lonely because my husband isn't coming home. I have to go home." Meredith paused and looked at Amelia "You could ask April. She's very compassionate."  
"Kepner?"Amelia wondered.  
"Yes. April." Meredith nodded.

* * *

"I can't believe we lost him" Lexie said "He had a chance. He was healthy and normal weight and all he did was trying to have a good time."  
"I can take care of the paper work." Mark offered.  
"No, it's fine, it's my job." Lexie said. "I hate to do the thing. One moment you are fine and the next moment you get a phone call from across the country that your parent died. I had finished my last exam in med school when Meredith called"  
"Meredith called?" Mark wondered.  
"Yeah" Lexie nodded "Do you ever feel like everything that is going to happen will be miserable? I mean, Jackson is great, but that's just it, he's great and I just don't feel for him the way I should. If you love someone it should feel like a firework!"  
"Have you ever felt like that?" Mark wondered.  
"Once" Lexie blushed and looked at Mark who had touched her arm.  
"I can be there for you" he said and Lexie's lips touched his. Just in this second the door opened and Jackson looked at this intimate display of affection.

* * *

Owen and Cristina sat at their dinner table and talked about their day. Cristina had performed a heart transplant on a child that hadn't even been born and Owen had saved two victims from a car crash. But after the medical talk, Cristina brought up her personal life after Owen had asked her what was the matter with her: "Meredith is bitching about her McDreamy drama again, honestly, I don't get it. How can anyone be so caught up in a guy?"  
"Love." Owen suggested.  
"That's not love. It's neediness. It's like she can't be herself without him." Cristina said.  
"Like she'd die if he dies." Owen said.  
"Yah!" Cristina nodded. "Pathetic, right?"  
"I want that Cristina. All I need is you needing me." Owen said. "I don't want us to be just you and me."

* * *

Callie walked into Dr. Wyatt's office and sat down. Before the therapist ever got a chance to say a word, Callie started to talk. "It wasn't like that guy chose me, it's not the usual road I take to walk home. He didn't know me. I hardly ever walk anywhere and this one night I chose to because I was mad at Arizona. I only walked because I was supposed to have dinner at friend's house. And this boy, he was 13, he lost his mom after a hit and run when he was 5, he has been in 25 foster homes ever since because his father is a drug addict and I feel sorry for him, he said I looked like his mom and then he just thought maybe the thought of losing her would be easier to bear if he had a memory of how it happened. I know I should hate him, but I don't – and I know I'm going to be fine."  
"So, you want to stop seeing me?" the surprised therapist wondered.  
"No, I just wanted to let you know that I know that I'm going to be fine."

* * *

After she got back from the house where Jackson was packing up his stuff, Lexie saw that there was still someone in Derek's office "What are you still doing here?" Lexie wondered when opened the door.

"The budget, I've been looking at numbers for hours." Derek sighed "Why are you still here?"

"And you don't like to look at numbers." Lexie said.

"No, I don't, I really don't. I hate my job, for the first time in ages I hate what I'm doing I never hated my job, but right now I do." Derek said "I can't quit.

"Have you talked to Meredith?" Lexie wondered "I mean, she knows that you hate that job, but…"

"She's disappointed in me and angry." Derek said

"She's angry because you don't make it home in time to give Zola and Christopher a good night kiss at least once a week" Lexie clarified "She's missing you. The kids are missing you."

"I can't tell her that I hate the job. We sacrificed too much." Derek said.

"You should tell her what you told me. Meredith understands." Lexie said.

"I'm not perfect." Derek nodded.

"Nobody expects you to be perfect. You don't have to be. She wants you to be you. She needs you to be Derek, she doesn't need Chief Shepherd. She needs Derek." Lexie said "and I need someone"

"Why are you crying?" Derek asked when he finally looked up at Lexie.

"I have nowhere to go." Lexie sobbed "Jackson and I broke up"

* * *

After Lexie had left, Derek decided to talk to the one person that certainly tried to understand him. "I hate my job Richard. I hate it. I don't like the meetings with all those executives, the board meetings, the budget negotiations, all of it. Meredith and I, I can't remember the last time we slept in the same bed at the same time." Derek admitted "Last night I slept at the guest room."

"You don't have to be Chief, Derek. Not for me, not for anybody. Meredith will understand." Richard encouraged Derek "I only realize this now, but I realize now that sometimes you have to do what is right for you, no matter what everyone else thinks."

"I've been working for this job my entire career." Derek said "and now I hate it."

"It's hard if you realize that something you thought was the right thing and the thing you wanted isn't what makes you happy. I let my jealousy of Ellis' success get in the way of my feelings for her. We would have been happy together. I ruined it." Richard said

"You chose your wife." Derek nodded.

"I chose to do what everyone thought was right except I wasn't happy. Adele knew about the affair. All those years I thought she had been unaware but she knew and she never said a word. We never knew what we wanted. I loved her, but I loved Ellis too. Always trying to do the right thing is a certain way to screw up. If you don't want to be Chief, resign. They'll find someone who really wants to do the job." Richard said.

"What was your first day as Chief like? How did you cope?" Derek wondered.

"I didn't. The job was an excuse to stay at the hospital" Richard smiled.

* * *

Meredith walked into Derek's office. He had paged her. She stood by the door when he got up. For a moment they looked at each other, but before Meredith got the chance to ask what he wanted to to he said "I'm not perfect Meredith."

"Is this supposed to be an apology?" Meredith wondered.

"Well sort of" Derek nodded.

"It wasn't perfect." Meredith teased him "You certainly proved your point and an apology usually includes the words sorry, apology or whatever."

"Whatever I'm going home with you tonight."he said

"Don't mock me." Meredith giggled.

"It's sex and mockery that keeps me interested in you." Derek smirked.

"Sex and mockery?" Meredith laughed.

"You look very sexy in those scrubs." Derek smirked and came closer to her. Meredith wondered if she was daydreaming after 18 hours in the OR.

"Are you trying to seduce me?" she wondered.

"Well, I know one room in the hospital we didn't have sex in." he kissed her neck. His lips touched her body. She obviously wasn't daydreaming.

"You want to have sex, in Dr. Webber's office." Meredith spat out.

"It's my office now. There's a couch." He said.

"Chief Shepherd, your flirting has been better." Meredith mocked him like this was a hook up.

"Come on, you can't resist me." He smiled.

"I could, but I don't want to. You've been ignoring me for weeks and you promised sex. I like sex." Meredith kissed him and opened his belt.

"We are good at it."

Derek woke up tingled by a few beams of sunlight "We should get dressed." Derek whispered. He had woken up in his office like many nights before.

"And we shouldn't sleep on the couch again." Meredith noticed that her back was hurting.

"It's more comfortable with you on it." Derek smirked and looked at his wife. He had missed waking up to her.

"I'm going to pick an on call room over this any time." Meredith said "There are beds."

"We could. I mean there's still time." Derek tried to persuade her to have a go.

"No, Derek, no. I haven't had breakfast, my shift starts in an hour and I want to check on Christopher before. He's been in daycare all night." Meredith pointed out.

"We could pick him up and go to Luis' bistro for breakfast." Derek suggested.

When they were on their way out, Cristina and Alex spotted Derek, Christopher and Meredith leaving the hospital "Why is Meredith all ovr Shepher again?" Alex asked in surprise.

"I don't know. He's a guy, so nothing he's doing makes any sense." Cristina answered.

"What has Hunt done to you?" Alex rolled his eyes.

"Nothing, he's doing absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Why does he keep doing this?" Cristina wondered.

"Nothing?" Alex wondered.

"Yeah! Don't ask evil Spawn!" Cristina said and got into the elevator.

* * *

 _Which brings us to why we're here today. A few weeks ago, it was all supposed to be over... we shouldn't even be here, but we are. We've seen a lot of people die, we pushed boundaries and we are still here. It isn't hard to knock down a big, evil that's telling everybody that the world's going to end. But that's in our head. What is hard... is figuring out what to build in its place, and if we're going to do that... we can't do it alone. We're going to need all of you..._

* * *

"What's up Jackson? You haven't been up here in month" April noted when she saw Jackson at the hospital roof.  
"I walked in on Lexie and Dr. Sloan. Sloan, can you believe it? Lexie has been kissing him and I walked in …" Jackson yelled.  
"Jackson, what happened?" April asked and stood next to Jackson.  
"I broke up with Lexie. She was cheating on me… Sloan…" Jackson said again.  
"Are you sure?" April wondered.  
"Her lips were touching his. She surely gets around." He snapped.  
"Lexie wouldn't do something like this" April said.  
"Sticking your tongue into an attending's mouth certainly isn't anything a girlfriend does. No she has done this."  
"Jackson, stop punching the wall, you need your… " April tried to stop Jackson.  
"I just want to feel pain!" he said.  
"Feel it! Feel it!" April hugged him and for a moment their faces moved closer to each other "Feel the pain" April said and their lips touched. Their mouth opened, their tongues moved.  
"That's… April… we can't continue… we…" Jackson tried to interject.  
"It's okay, Jackson!" April nodded and opened her shirt. There she was in a bra on a hospital roof.  
"No you are a virgin, I can't…" Jackson insisted.  
"I want it, Jackson." April said "It's okay."  
"I don't…" Jackson said, grabbed April's shirt and put it back into her hands and got back into the building.


	48. Chapter 48

Thanks for all the reviews! I appreciate them so much and hope to keep you entertained. The wedding that kept me from writing was great, but now you are in for the next chapter. The love triangle between Lexie and her boyfriends is going to keep spinning and she isn't sure who'll win over her heart completely. Cristina is going to find out that surgery isn't everything. There'll be an update on the Chief and a lot about Meredith and Derek. If you are angry at me mid-way through, I encourage you to read until the very end of the chapter. It's intense!

 **500 reviews! Wow! Thanks! I'm absolutely delighted with the response that last chapter got! Thank you for taking your time!**

* * *

 **Chapter** 48

 _We don't know what the future has in store for us. We might be happy now, but there will be a day when you will kiss your partner for the last time, and chances are you won't even know it. So make every kiss memorable because it might be the last one._ _They hit you out of nowhere. When bad things come, they come suddenly, without warning. We rarely get to see the catastrophe coming, no matter how well we try to prepare for it._

* * *

Monday morning. Cristina had gone straight to the scrub room and was taken a deep breath. Teddy had paged her to come to the OR asap and she had jumped out of bed and ran across the street to the hospital. Teddy came in while the nurses prepped the patient for surgery. Trauma – the driver had suffered a heart attack and hit another car. They cracked open his chest and Cristiina sighed looking at the extent of the injury "Oh my god, this looks like carnage."  
"Cristina" Teddy looked at her in shock.  
"What? This looks amazing. We'll be in here for hours- just you me and his heart." Cristina smiled "Don't die on me, do you hear me? Your heart is just too awesome to die before I fixed them. I can't wait to tell Meredith about this".  
While they were trying to clear the surgical field, Owen came in. Teddy looked up and smiled "You're heaven sent- come here, we need a hand."  
"I was.." Owen stopped, there was something he had to tell Cristina, but as she was in surgery treating a critical patient, he had to follow protocol. Ten minutes ago Teddy could have paged another resident, but now protocol applied and there was nothing he could have done.

* * *

A little earlier…

The trees had lost most of their leaves. Only a few random ones had withstood the change of the season and were hanging on to the trees that had once emerged from. George and his mother were walking through the park like many times before, it was the first time his mother felt strong enough to go onto that walk with him. She was half way through her radiation and things finally started to look up. "I'm so proud of you Georgie." His mom smiled.  
"I bought a ring mom, I'm going to propose." George said. " She's the one."  
"Oh, I really liked Callie." His mom said "but I'm sure she's a great girl too. But who am I to tell you anything about who to be with?"  
"I'm so nervous. With Callie – it was passionate and impulsive- but I've thought about this for a while now and it just feels right – it feels so right and I… I hope she feels the same."

* * *

Derek and Amy had driven to the hospital early. During the normal hours the hospital's operating rooms are too booked and early in the morning it was easier to squeeze in a trial procedure or two. While inserting the third probe of the day Derek's phone rang.  
"Hey honey" he smiled after the nurse put Meredith on speaker.  
"Hey Der" Meredith said with a smile on her face. She was on the ferry and tried to enjoy the view of the city just before starting the car to get off. She was late and she knew she was late. Zola had been running a fever and the nanny they occasionally hired had taken her time to get to the house. "You wouldn't believe the morning I had." She continued "I had baby vomit all over my favorite shirt."  
"Your Dartmouth shirt?" Derek wondered "I like that shirt." Meredith smiled to herself, she had worn that shirt the first time she had been up at the trailer.  
"No, the lavender one." Meredith said "The one my mom gave me for high school graduation."  
"I like the Dartmouth shirt." Derek smiled.  
"How's Amy?" Meredith asked "Tired of cutting open people yet?"  
"No, I'm fine." Amy smiled "Only twenty more patients and we have enough to move on to the monitoring stage. But just a note to both of you while everybody in this OR is listening. Keep it down next time." Derek looked at her with a smile and Amy's mouth widened and her eyes expressed a hint of anger. "No seriously Derek. I need sleep and I… I have to move out if… "  
Suddenly they heard a bang on the other side of the line.  
Derek and Amy exchanged a look of concern. There had been a bang followed by a long moment of silence. "Page Dr. Grey- Lexie Grey" Amelia told one of the nurses. "She's going to take over for Dr. Shepherd."  
"It's nothing, right?" Derek looked at Amy.  
"I don't know." Amy said and they started to hear voices on the other end "Mam, mam are you okay? She isn't answering, call an ambulance!" they heard from the other line.  
"Dr. Shepherd, I ask you kindly to put down the instruments, I'll take over for you." Amy said "I can go on alone – and don't tell Dr. Grey about this. Bokeeh, please page Dr. Nelson. I'll finish this surgery, but we need him."

There was a massive bang. George looked at his mother and said "There must have been an accident, I'll check if the need me"  
"I'm okay, Georgie." His mom said.  
George approached the crash side quickly. There was a massive pile-up. A semi had hit the tail-end of a traffic jam and three ambulances were waiting to take the injured to the hospitals. The fire brigade had arrived to cut out the driver of one of the vehicles. George's breath stopped for a second when he came close enough to recognise the car."Meredith! Oh my God, Meredith" he said when he approached the car.  
"Sir, you have to stay behind the barrier." A police officer tried to hold him back.  
"I'm a doctor." He said. "I can help to examine her. Here's my ID tag from the hospital"  
"Alright, he can go through" the policemen looked at the two EMTs.  
"Thank you, Sir." He mumbled.

Meredith's arm was stuck under a piece of another car that had entered her windshield and she was showing signs of hypotonia and delayed pupilar reactions. She had a head lack injury -and George guessed that there were some internal injuries too. "George" she muttered in pain "Tell Derek and the kids I love them".  
George looked at her "Mer, you'll be okay" he insisted. "The firemen are will get you out of here and we'll get you to a hospital"  
"No, I'll stay here and make sure you don't injure her with that" George insisted.  
"We know what we are doing" the firefighter insisted "and you'll drive her to Seattle Grace Mercy West."  
"Seattle Pres. is closer and with this extent of injuries, I don't want to take any chances" the EMT said.

* * *

At the same time Derek was standing outside the operating room. "You shouldn't have pulled me from that surgery" Derek yelled at Amy.  
"Derek, Meredith has been in an accident and we both don't have any clue how she's doing!" Amy said and they both looked at their pagers "Jane Doe coming in by ambulance"  
Derek started running to the ER.  
"Derek, stop." Amelia yelled.  
"Derek, this is not Meredith. It's not Meredith Derek." Amy said "And even if it is her, you should sit down, you are in no condition to operate" Amelia said.  
"I'm the Chief of surgery" Derek said.  
"Right now you are a husband who doesn't know how your wife is doing." Amy said "I hope she's okay, I really hope she's doing fine, but there's no way in hell, you'll go into that trauma room with me.

* * *

 _"You are not supposed to be here, Meredith. What are you doing here? You have to get back!" a voice told her.  
"Mom? Where am I? What happened?"  
"You were in an accident. We don't have long, we have to get you back to your family." Ellis smiled  
"You know them? You know Derek, Christopher and Zola? I met Maggie."  
"And you both grew up to be extraordinary women But you have to go back because you can be the mother I was never capable of being." Her mother nodded  
"Mom, I understand you."  
"Go Meredith, you can go now. I'll be fine, you go and I'll just stay here. They need you." Ellis said.  
Another voice echoed in her mind "Meredith, you have to go, run, don't walk into the light. Don't go gentle into that good night. We'll wait for you, but it's not your time to be here yet." Izzie said.  
"I hope you are alright, Izzie. Derek, he did all that he could and Alex, he misses you, he loved you."  
"I know, but you have to go, you don't want to spend a lifetime here, waiting for him."_

* * *

"Dr. Shepherd, what's the matter?" Lexie looked at Amelia's shocked face after she had entered the trauma room  
"you are the only one in here." Amelia mumbled. She had expected Dr. Nelson to be in the room with her.  
"and she'll be dead if we wait. It'd be too late. So what are we supposed to do?" Lexie wondered. Amelia wanted to tell Lexie the truth, but she knew that Lexie was right, she needed to be taken to the OR as soon as possible.  
"We'll take her to the OR" Amelia said "I'll notify them, just get her upstairs and make sure not to talk to anybody. I'll be there in a minute." After Lexie had left the room with the patient on a gurney, Amelia let out a big sigh. "Are you okay, Dr. Shepherd?" April wondered when she walked into the room with another patient "Because I'm not, Owen said he had to pull Cristina from surgery and hasn't told me why and now he isn't coming back and I've been waiting for him for fifteen minutes…"  
Amelia interrupted her "It's Meredith. Meredith has been in an accident – and I have to get to the OR."

* * *

"Dr. Shepherd? I'm looking for George. Have you seen him? He promised to meet me here" Anna approached him quickly with two paper cups of coffee. "Are you okay?" she asked when he noticed how nervous he was.  
"Meredith, she was in an accident." Derek said. "We were on the phone and there was bang and …"  
Anna looked at her phone. "George?" she wondered.  
"Meredith was in an accident. I'm sorry, I had to help. We are at Seattle Pres. and she's about to be taken to surgery. Can you tell Derek to come here?" George sounded nervous.  
"Yeah, I'll do that." Anna nodded. She bid her lips and looked at Dr. Shepherd. "She's at Seattle Pres. They are about to take her to surgery. George is with her. I can take you"  
"What if she… ?" Derek paused.  
"… dies?" Anna wondered and handed over the second paper cup "She isn't going to die. She'll be fine. She's going to be fine and here, that's George's favorite kind. Chocolate Moccachino with lots of espresso."

* * *

Thirty minutes later Derek and Anna had finally arrived at Seattle Pres. Meredith was still in surgery, so Anna and Derek sat down next to each other in the waiting area.  
"You don't have to stay here all day!" Derek said "I'm sure you have a job"  
"I called my client, he understands. Besides when…" she paused, telling him about her dead fiancé wouldn't benefit him "If I was ever in this situation, I would want somebody to sit by my side. So here I am."  
"I took her for granted." Derek said "I only just got her back and now… I might have lost her."  
"Don't think about it. Don't think about all the horrible consequences, I know it's hard – it's hard to be the person in the waiting room, but don't think about all the mightbe's until the doctors come here to update you." Anna said "George is in there with her -so she isn't alone. And I'm here with you."  
"Can you call someone and ask them to have lunch with Christopher?" Derek wondered.  
"I'll do that." Anna nodded.

* * *

 _"Meredith, it's time to go back" a man said.  
"You look at little bit like Derek. Who are you? I've never seen you, but you know who I am and those eyes."  
"I'm Christopher's grandpa." He smiled. It was Derek's smile she thought to herself.  
"Why are you here? I thought all of this is a product of my imagination. Why am I meeting someone I never met before?"  
"Are you sure this is all in your head? Last time I saw someone here it was Amy, but Derek saved her before I could talk to her. Please tell her I needed her to stay alive and that I love her. Tell all of them I love them and that I'm so proud of them. You have to do this for me."  
"I don't know how to get back. I'm here."_

* * *

Callie was sitting at a lunch table. She had been the one to pick up the call by George's girlfriend. She made a mental note to block that number, but what she was asking for hadn't been a favour to her. She was sitting at the dinner table eating spaghetti with Christopher who was blissfully unaware of his mother's accident. He wasn't supposed to know anything about it, but he sensed something was wrong because neither Derek nor Meredith was there and usually he would have lunch with one of them. "Is there something wrong with mommy and daddy?" the boy wondered. Callie's eyes filled with tears, but she managed to retain her composure.  
"No, mommy is going to be fine" she uttered with her lips "She's a fighter". She hugged Christopher to make him feel safe – and for a moment she felt safe herself. In this messed up world there was a place where everything wasn't so bad. She found her voice and lied to him "Mommy and daddy are just in surgery, that's why they asked me to take you out for lunch."

* * *

Lexie and Cristina met in the scrub room. Amelia had just told Lexie that Meredith had been in an accident and Lexie tried to hold back her tears. While she was brushing her hands, Cristina had walked in and hugged her "I heard you fixated a vertebrae for Shepherd." Cristina said "That must be awesome! I mean, it's your very first solo surgery, little Grey. And I… I had this patient… he was in a traffic accident and his heart… it looked like minced meat and I fixed it… I fixed it because I'm God! Look at me!" Cristina said with a smile on her face. She was unaware of Meredith's condition, but realized that something was wrong when she saw a tear running down Lexie's cheeks.  
"Meredith has been in an accident." Lexie said "She's at Seattle Pres. Amelia said they don't know if she's going to make it. A guy who had a heart attack crashed into her car when she was on the way back to work"

* * *

It was afternoon when one of the doctors finally came to Derek and Anna. George hugged Anna and shook his head when she asked him how Meredith was while the doctors escorted Derek to the ICU. "There's little to no brain activity" the trauma surgeon explained "We tried our best to get her abdominal bleeding under control, but we just have to wait and see.". Derek nodded. They had fixed a brain bleed, had inserted a chest tube and put her on a ventilator. She looked tiny in that bed. "We'll just have to wait and see" The doctor said.  
"Can I have a look at her chart?" Derek wondered and took it before he sat down next to Meredith. He took her hand. "You know we never had this talk and it's quite surprising because we see things like this every day. So we are going to have this talk now. If I die I want you to move on, I want you to live your life and forget that I'm not there, remember the good time we had, but try to have more; take the kids and go somewhere nice. I'll always love you Meredith and I want you to be happy."  
"She'll make it Dr. Shepherd." A voice from afar said. Derek turned around and saw George.  
"Derek." He said "You can call me Derek. I get why you bought that ring. And you paid up, O'Malley – keep the money. If it wasn't for you, she'd be dead -and your girlfriend – she's great. So go and ask her to marry you or whatever"

"What a day!" George sighed when he got into bed next to Anna. "This must be the worst day in Dr. Shepherd's life."  
"No it isn't" Anna said "the worst day is the day you realise that you are never going to wake up next to that person again – and Meredith is still here. So no, this isn't the worst day in his life."  
"Do you still love him?" George wondered.  
"Yeah, in a weird way I still do." Anna said. "This sometimes feels like cheating… I know it's crazy, but it does. When we had sex for the first time I cleaned the whole apartment- well- until I found our year books. We had this joke… He wrote "see you in another life" into mine and I did into his. How is she?"  
"Well, she coded twice during surgery and… they have to get back in tomorrow because… well you can't fix everything at once if the patient is in the shape she was in…"

* * *

 _"I miss her. I still wake up and smell her parfume."  
"I want to get back, I really do! I just don't know how. I mean, one minute we are finally happy -and the next moment all of this happens and I'm here in this weird place where I don't know what to do and where I don't know how to move on- I want to go back- be with Derek, Lexie, Mark – all of them."  
"This is not how your story ends, Meredith! I raised you to be an extraordinary human being!"  
"What is this?"  
"This is what you want it to be."_

* * *

Arizona walked into the living room where Callie was sitting on the couch watching TV. "Hey" she said and sat down next to her.  
"Why are you looking at me like this?" Callie asked.  
"Meredith" Arizona said "I saw you and Christopher and her accident – this must bring back some emotions"  
"Mer was in an accident, I was assaulted by a crazy kid" Callie said "I'm fine, Arizona"

* * *

"Dr. Yang, what are you doing here?" Bailey wondered when the resident walked into Richard Webber's room.  
"Doing what needs to be done." Cristina said. "You can be saved, so stop crying over the fact that life has been tough for you and start to fight. Meredith is in a coma. She was in an accident. They don't know if she's going to wake up. She might not have a chance because she was hit by a freaking truck. But you, you, Mr. Big Hot Shot surgeon, you have a shot here."  
"Meredith was in an accident?" Richard looked up.  
"She might die. She might actually die." Cristina nodded "So stop this pussy treatment and follow the treatment plan she had worked out for you with that oncologist or I will personally kick your ass out of that hospital."  
"Dr. Yang?" Bailey's voice interrupted Cristina's rant.  
"What do you want?" Cristina wondered "You are small, I can extend the ass kicking"  
"Thank you" Bailey said "I was going to say thank you"

* * *

It had been a long day, but Derek couldn't think of sleep anyway. He was sitting next to Meredith's bed in the ICU when Mark came in with a food package from his favourite restaurant. "Hey man, I came here when I heard. I thought you might need this." He said.  
"I'm not hungry" Derek said.  
"You have to eat something. I guess you've been here all day." Mark said. "Little Grey and Yang have just passed me by in the hall."  
"I'm not hungry." Derek repeated "How could I be when she's here like this?"  
"I can check on the kids if you want me to." Mark offered.  
"Amy is with them" Derek said "and we told the nanny we need her tomorrow. I should have resigned two weeks ago. We would have had two weeks together. I want those two weeks back."  
"You had lots of sex during those two weeks. Hell, I hardly got to see you" Mark said "She'll get better, right? Grey's a fighter."  
"I need her to get better." Derek said. "I'm so scared because I can't raise those kids without her."

* * *

Lexie and Jackson sat in the waiting room at Seattle Pres. "What are you doing here?" Lexie wondered when she saw him. She got up and sat down next to him. It had been two weeks since she had kissed Mark, two weeks since they had broken up, two weeks since they had talked.  
"Waiting" he said quietly. "It just felt like I needed to be here for some reason."  
"You've known her for longer than I have. It's weird isn't it?" Lexie wondered "You two have all those stories and all I have is the story of how she showed up for family dinner one time."  
"You are her family" Jackson said.  
"We had a tough start." Lexie said. "she hated me."  
"No, she was just afraid to love you" Jackson said. "I mean, look at you, one can't help himself but love you." He took her hand and put his hand around hers. "She'll make it back"  
"How do you know?" Lexie wondered and looked at his eyes.  
"I believe that things are going to work out."

* * *

 **One week later**

* * *

 _"You can't stay here forever"  
"I'm trying to figure out how to get back"  
"What did you do last time?"  
"Get on a plane and fly back to Seattle"  
"I wasn't talking about Boston."  
"I'm though. I'd love to meet her."  
"She's fine. She's in the place where all unborn babies are. I took care of her"  
"You gave Maggie away."  
"You wanted to call her Ellis."_

* * *

Table cloths were flying through the kitchen. Owen caught them and put them down. "All of this keeps going back to that?" Owen yelled.  
"Yeah, you didn't tell me my best friend was in an accident! You knew!" Cristina yelled. "All this time you were in the OR with me and Teddy you knew."  
"It's protocol, Cristina." Owen said "There was nothing you could have done -and in the OR it's our job to save the people on that table."  
"He was the one who drove into her car" Cristina said.  
"The man had a heart attack." Owen yelled back. "It wasn't his fault."

* * *

Lexie sat in the living room with her niece and nephew. Derek had dropped them off at her place on his way to the hospital. Three days ago they had transferred her to Seattle Grace Mercy West. One week ago Meredith had been in that accident. and by now it was hard to keep what had happened to Meredith from the kids. Zola ran through the house and looked at every room "What are you doing sweetie?" Lexie wondered  
"Looking for mama." The girl said.  
"You mom isn't here." Lexie said apologetically.  
"Where's mama?" Zola asked.  
"At the hospital." Lexie said, but the kids kept interrogating her.  
"Can we go and see her? Daddy takes us to gallery sometimes." Christopher smiled.  
"She's really busy" Lexie smiled uncomfortable.

There was a knock on the door and she decided to check who was there. Mark was standing in front of her with a bag full of groceries.  
"What are you doing here?" Lexie looked at Mark.  
"I brought groceries. I thought you might need something." Mark said. "So can I come in?"  
"Uncle Mark" Christopher waved at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Mark wondered as he started to unpack the box in the kitchen.  
"I just lied to them. They asked about Meredith and I lied." Lexie sighed.  
"You tried to protect him and if it's anybody who should tell them, it's Derek." Mark said.  
"What if she doesn't make it?" Lexie asked "I mean it's been a week and there's still no sign of improvement."  
"She'll make it" Mark smiled "I know she will."  
"Why are you so sure?" Lexie wondered.  
"Because it would destroy him if she didn't." Mark said "and some things are just meant to happen- like Derek and Meredith growing old together or …"  
Lexie interrupted him "How do you know?"  
Mark took a gasp of air. "Because if it happened to me, I'd die with the person I love -and no matter how little time I had with her, I'd know that I have no regrets because I met her. Derek has that. He has a beautiful little family and it'll be amazing."

* * *

Derek and Amelia sat in his office. He had talked to Meredith's doctors two hours ago and had taken a nap after that. The couch felt empty without her. At noon Amelia came into his office to get a few signatures.  
"I'm crazy, for believing in fairytales and magic, ain't I?" Derek wondered and looked at the scan.  
"I don't know." Amy said.  
"What would you do? I mean, look at her chart" Derek said "If she was my patient, I'd start to talk to the family about… it."  
"I don't know. They resuscitated her like three times yesterday." Amelia said quietly "You never talked about extraordinary measures? Or who is going to take care of the kids if something happens to you?"  
"Lexie and Mark are their godparents." Derek said "But I'm here and she'll be there."  
"Her brain activity is at a bare minimum." Amelia said after looking through her chart.  
"I know." Derek nodded. "What I don't know is, if her life is worth living if she ever wakes up."  
"She might be okay." Amelia said "There people who wake up from this kind of head injury. The neurosurgeon at Seattle Pres. seemed competent enough."

* * *

 _"I wish I had talked Thatcher into meeting you earlier."  
"I wish I had met Lexie and you earlier – I mean all my life I thought that there was nobody out there that loved me"  
"There are though"  
"I had a village- hadn't I"  
"You have a village – Meredith. All you have to do is to get back."_

* * *

Lexie looked at the x-ray in Meredith's chart.  
"Wow, whose hand is that?" Callie asked when she walked into the room.  
"Meredith's" Lexie said and showed Lexie the EMG.  
"That nerve is really damaged" Callie said "Almost impossible to fix."  
"You can't fix it?" Lexie wondered.  
"I can try my best, but with this degree of damage, I can't really guarantee anything." Callie said.  
"It doesn't really matter anyway, does it?" Lexie sat down. Yesterday the doctor had taken her to the side and had asked her if her sister had ever talked about extra ordinary measures with her.  
"She still hasn't shown any signs of recovery?" Callie asked. Usually recovering patients showed at least some signs of improvements at this stage.  
"Nothing." Lexie said "The doctor asked Derek about it and I think he wants to take her off the vent tonight."

* * *

George, Cristina, Jackson, April and Alex were sitting in front of Meredith's room while Lexie and Derek sat inside with the physician who had monitored her "Okay, we're all doctors here. You don't need to say this." Derek said, but he continued anyway "I'm not saying it because you need to know the procedure. I say it because even if you think you're prepared for what's about to happen, you're not. Your brain can't fully absorb what we're about to do. But by saying this I'm giving you a little time to catch up. So after I stop her medications I'm gonna extubate her. As you decided this morning, if life-sustaining procedures would only prolong the moment of death, these procedures should be discontinued. Once support is removed, she may only hold on for a few minutes or the process could take hours. I'm turning the ventilator off. We've sedated her with morphine so she's not feeling any of this."  
"Thanks" Lexie mumbled.  
"I'll give you some privacy." The doctor said and turned off the alarm.  
"I tried so hard out there in the park. I thought if we could just get him back here alive I -I can't stay here.I'm-I'm tell Derek that I was here and I had to go." George said and walked away.

Two hours later Derek had left to go to the toilet. Lexie sat there with Meredith and tried to make sense of the situation. "You don't hear me… well, maybe you do, I don't know, but I have to tell you something… I can't tell anyone because it's crazy and messed up, but I love him." Lexie sobbed in Meredith's hospital room. The ventilator was still standing there, she could easily reattach her, but she'd probably get fired "In fact I'm so in love with him I have no idea how to live without him. He's incredible he's so incredible. He listens and he gets me. He totally gets me… if I talk to him I feel like we knew each other for a lifetime. I'm sure I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I've never felt so sure about anything in my life. So please Mer, wake up, wake up and tell me I can do it. You are my older sister. I really need an older sister to stand at the altar next to me."  
"Mer, can you hear me?" she asked again.  
Derek entered the room and bid his lips. It was only a matter of time until his wife would take her last breath. Lexie stopped and to him it felt totally unreal. Amy was home with the kids and he was sitting there. She looked peaceful.  
"I love you." He whispered  
"I can't live without you" he took her injured hand. "Do you hear me? I let you go, but I want you to come back. I always wanted you to come back."

* * *

Two days later

 _"Dr. Grey, you have to get back now because you are not ready to be here."  
"I never wanted to be here and I don't know how to get away from here. There are no windows, no doors, no walls. Where am I supposed to go?"  
Izzie: "It'd kill Derek to lose you now. You have to figure out how to get back."  
"I don't know how to do it this time."  
"You do, Meredith. You do what you always did, you fight and you become what I was never capable of"  
"Everything would be easier if I just stay here. They'll get over it."  
Dad: "No, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be easier and you know this. He can't live without you."  
"It seemed like it."  
trial patient "Come on, you told me to fight, to try everything and right now you have to try everything to get back to your husband"  
Christopher: "Tell Carolyn and the kids I love them."  
Izzie: "Say hello to everyone and that I would rather be in an OR than here."  
Ellis: What did you do last time?  
I lived mom, I just lived. I….  
"Meredith, go, go now. You have your whole life ahead of you. You are going to be a remarkable surgeon and…"_

* * *

Lexie had sat by Meredith's bed side for a while now. Derek had sat on the other side of the bed all night, but had gone home to get changed and check on the kids. She heard a voice. "Hey, can I come in?  
Lexie turned around and saw Jackson "Sure" she nodded.  
"How is she? Have you been in here all night?" he wondered. He was supposed to check on her. Her arterial oxygen saturation had improved, her heartbeat was normal. He looked at Lexie after he had written down the values. They all knew that sometimes patients took time, but he felt like this was dragging on for too long.  
"She's stable. Derek and I took turns, her breathing is steady." Lexie said "Callie and Bailey took care of the kids. They said that it'd take some time, but I don't think she's dying."  
"I can stay here for a while in case you want to catch a break." Jackson offered. "Her stats improved. Her ICP returned to normal"  
"No, it's fine. I …" Lexie said and looked at Meredith "did her eyelid just move?"  
"Yeah, it did. Page someone!" Jackson looked at her.  
"Mer, don't worry, I'm here and Derek is coming and…" Lexie smiled. "Just do it again, if Dr. Gordon is here."

"Meredith? Meredith do you hear me?" Lexie asked.  
"It's likely a reflex." The physician said.  
"No, look at that and… oh my god, there's a …" she paused. Meredith's heart beat got faster and her eyes moves "She's waking up… she has been off the ventilator for two days, her breathing is steady. What I'm saying is… she's waking up… Page Derek Shepherd… Jackson, please, get Derek."  
"Alright" he nodded the moment Meredith opened her eyes.  
"Hey Meredith" Lexie smiled. "You are back!"  
"Hey Lexie. What happened?" Meredith wondered "Where am I?"  
"You were in an accident!" Lexie said "You are at Seattle Grace. Derek got you transferred."  
"Where's Derek?" Meredith wondered.  
"He went home to take care of the kids." Lexie smiled "Jackson called him, he'll be here soon."  
"Lexie, go for it, marry him!" Meredith said all of a sudden.  
"What is she talking about?" Jackson looked at her confussed.  
"That she can't live without you…" Meredith smiled "But tell me what happened, why am I here?"  
"You have been in an accident. George saved your life, he was just at the right place at the right time. He was there when it happened." Lexie said.  
"I'll go and call Shepherd." Jackson got up and left the room.  
"I'm so glad you are okay." Lexie hugged her sister.  
"My hand hurts" Meredith said.  
"You are going to need surgery for that, one of the doctors will talk to you about it and you are going to need some physical therapy, but it's the left hand, so it's not too bad." Lexie hugged Meredith again.  
"You are hurting me" Meredith complained "You are my sister, not my doctor… so I want the truth"  
"They'll have to wait and see, but the nerve is damaged" Lexie bit her lips "Callie had a look into that -and Richard… Cristina coerced him into doing it."

* * *

 _We do our very best, but sometimes it's just not good enough. We buckle our seatbelts, we wear a helmet, we stick to the lighted paths, we try to be safe. We try so hard to protect ourselves, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Cause when the bad things come, they come out of nowhere. The bad things come suddenly, with no warning. But we forget that sometimes that's how the good things come too. You don't always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens._ The Waking up to see another day is a blessing. Don't take it for granted. Make it count and be happy that you're alive.

* * *

"Mommy" Christopher's face lit up when Derek opened the door. "We missed you."  
"I was sleeping." Meredith said.  
"Must have really tired" the boy said and took her hand.  
"Take care, Zola. Mommy's hand is in a cast, you can't hug her too hard." Derek reminded Zola who stormed through the room.  
"I thought you would like to see them" Derek smiled and Meredith nodded. "How are you?" "I'm getting better." Meredith smiled "Especially with these little rascals around".  
"They asked for you all the time" Derek said.  
"You were like sleeping beauty" Zola smiled."and daddy's kiss made you wake up"


	49. Chapter 49

_I'm glad all of you enjoyed the last chapter according to your reviews! Brighter skies ahead for Meredith and Derek, but t_ _his chapter was quite hard to write as I'm not quite in the mood to write about Christmas. Even though the weather here hasn't been great for most of the summer now, it's hard to get in a wintery mood. At least this chapter is going to be a little more fluffy than the last ones. Be prepared for some nice family moments and bonding moments!_

 _Thanks for reviewing!_

* * *

 **Chapter 49**

 _They say life doesn't give you second chances. But we do. Surgeons do. You break a bone, we put it back together. You bleed, we make it stop. You flatline, we resuscitate you, but as much as we give people second chances, surgeons don't usually get them because the kind of mistakes we make, are impossible to recover from_

Meredith and Derek were sitting in Derek's car. A small layer of snow had covered everything outside over night. "Why have they cleared me for surgery?" Meredith moaned in the car on her way to the hospital. "I mean I get that they are short staffed Christmas Eve, but"  
Derek who was in the driver seat grinned like a Cheshire cat "Because you've been out of the hospital for two weeks, Callie operated on your hand twenty days ago, you are ready."  
"What if I'm not? Your family is coming, there's so much to prepare and…" Meredith sighed "why is there a suit in the back of the car?"  
"I'm meeting the board today. I'll officially hand in my resignation and I won't be Chief anymore." Derek said "Merry Christmas"  
"Have you told your mother?" Meredith wondered. She knew that they had talked a lot over the phone while she had been in the hospital. "I don't feel ready to go back."  
"Callie cleared you." Derek said "Just jump into the water."  
"Callie feels like she owes me." Meredith said "I don't, but she feels like it. She hasn't even looked at my hand properly, she just talked about the custody hearing and Christmas"  
"We'll stop by at Louis and have a few croissants and a good cup of coffee, you can have waffles and you'll be more relaxed when we get to the hospital."

* * *

Lexie was standing in the exam room where Mark had paged her to do a consult on a twenty year old patient who wanted to have a liposuction. He had told her to inform the patient about all possible risks and about the procedure herself. It was one of the first consults she ever got to do without supervision "Why do you want that surgery?" Lexie wondered. She looked at the questionnaire in front of her. A liposuction for a normal sized twenty-year old wasn't anything Mark agreed to do on a regular basis.  
"My boyfriend left me because I didn't have a size 8." The girl said. "I just want to be skinny."  
"You should have dumped him. You are beautiful. You don't need that surgery." Lexie told her. She knew the risks that were associated with a liposuction and she knew the consequences. She had seen it quite a few times now. "Don't ever say you are not good enough. If that person can't see how amazing you are, then they are the ones that are not good enough for you."  
"But he left me" the blonde insisted "I wasn't good enough and I want to prove to him that I am"  
"No, he was an ass and he doesn't deserve you." Lexie said "My boyfriend left me because he saw me kissing another guy. I gave him a reason to dumb me. You were just you – and he was being an ass"  
Jackson had wanted to enter the room, but he stopped at the doorstep instead and waited. Lexie was talking about him.  
"Was he hot?" the girl asked. Jackson smirked and Lexie blushed.  
"Who?" she stammered.  
"The boyfriend and the guy you kissed" the girl smiled.  
"I didn't kiss him, he kissed me" Lexie looked at the girl who turned her head and looked right back at her like she wouldn't settle until Lexie gave her an answer. "but yeah, they were both pretty hot."  
"Why did you do it?" the girl wondered.  
"Again. I didn't, I wouldn't have, but I was feeling bad and he kissed me and it just felt good, until my boyfriend walked in and broke up with me."  
"Did you love him?" the girl wondered "I think I love him"  
Lexie didn't quite know how to answer the question "I think I love both of them. Jackson is sweet and careing and Mark… I mean he's just Mark."  
Jackson came into the room and cleared his throat.  
Lexie turned around and looked at him "What are you doing here?"  
"Dr. Sloan wanted me to get you" he said looking to the ground.  
"That's right, the rhinoplasty" Lexie nodded "I'll be right there. Dr. Avery here is going to answer all your questions"  
"Is it painful?" the girl wondered.  
"You are going to be sore for a while." Jackson admitted. "It will hurt and it's going to hurt for a while and you'll have bruises that remind you of what happened for a while."

* * *

The ER was busy. The first few snow flakes had caused Seattle to decend into chaos. "Get out of the way" Callie yelled. One of the interns was blocking the entrance to the ER and kept starring at her.  
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Callie wondered.  
"You are terrifying." The intern said.  
"No, I'm confident -and don't block the doors, there's a patient coming in and I don't want you to stand in my way"

Meredith came into the ER with Cristina and observed the scene. Cristina looked and uttered "WOW, Callie is…"  
"herself again." Meredith added with astonishment.  
"Mer, you are back" Callie came to her when she saw her.  
"Derek forced me to come. He said I'm not supposed to waste all my time on the couch feeling sorry for myself." Meredith mumbled  
"Let me look at that hand." Callie grabbed the hand and looked at the scar. "Wow, some of my nicer work. You should be fine. Have you done the exercises?"  
"Yes, I moved my thumb, done the grabbing exercise while playing catch with Christopher…" Meredith repeated.  
"… I see you are set." Callie smiled "I know it's hard."  
"I just don't feel like me." Meredith said "Did you ever felt like not you after the accident?"  
"Are you okay?" Callie wondered.  
"I guess I am" Meredith looked at Callie "I'm still alive."

* * *

Anna and George sat down on her couch. She unfolded a box and put it onto the table "George O'Malley, you are officially moved in." Anna said "This was the last box -and now all your stuff is here."  
George looked around "How can you afford this?"  
"It's called a job." Anna said. -that and the fact that she paid for this house with her dead fiance's money.  
"You must be making a lot"  
"It pays the bills and covers the mortgage and Sophie's daycare and I still have some of the money Daniel left me. He had a trust fund" Anna said "-and turns out I'm pretty good with money. It's my job."  
"Well it's my job to save lives and I couldn't afford a place like this." George said and realised that this seemed like a horrible statement. He had compared his job to hers.  
Anna ignored this statement and simply chose to address his status. "You are a resident. When you'll be an attending, you should easily be able to…" Anna said, but George interrupted her.  
"all I'm saying is…" he said "I'm the guy"  
"Are trying to tell me that you can't deal with the possibility that I make more money than you do?" Anna looked at him.  
"It's weird." He admitted. His mother had never worked.  
"Why?" Anna said "I have a degree, I have been busting my ass of to get to where I am now."  
"My mom was a stay at home mom." George said.  
"And my mom worked almost 24/7. I turned out okay. Are you worried about money? You don't have to pitch in. I can feed myself and Sophie." Anna walked into the kitchen followed by George.  
"This isn't about money." He insisted. "and I didn't mean to say that your job is less important than mine…"  
"You act like it is. Why do you freak out?" Anna wondered while she opened the fridge. "I mean, it's all working out fine. Why would we change that?"  
George stopped at the other side of the kitchen counter."I want kids -and – not right now – but I pictured us having kids – and"  
"you want me to stay at home like some 1960s house wife?" Anna wondered "I like my job, George. I might not save people's life, but I provide stability for people's lives. I have to go now and you should go, it's dinner time with your family."  
"Are you sure you are okay on your own?" he wondered.  
"Yeah, Sophie and I have our own Christmas traditions -and Sophie will be with her grandparents on Christmas Eve – so I have to drive to Tacoma." Anna said "and spend the rest of the evening in front of the telly before they drop her off here."

* * *

Twenty minutes after starting her shift, Meredith was already standing in the scrub room with Mark, Lexie, Jackson and Owen. "Grey, come one" Mark said. "I need you here."  
"Come on Lexie" Meredith whispered. She knew that Derek had asked him to make her day easier, but she didn't quite feel like stepping up to that table.  
Jackson and Lexie were standing side by side. Jackson smirked and whispered "Maybe if you enjoy that, maybe you shouldn't have kissed Dr. Sloan."  
Lexie looked up to him for a second, but brought her focus back to the patient.  
"Okay guys, the nail tore up his entire abdomen, you two are in charge of cleaning up his wounds, I want minimal scaring, so you better do a good job." Mark said "Hunt, what do you see?"  
"Not much, I need suction. Meredith, suction!" Owen looked up her. Meredith was holding the instrument and hoped that the fluid would eventually get less. "I'm…. alright, here you go…"  
"There's a tear near his splenic artery." Owen yelled. "Grey, suction, I need more suction"  
"I'm leaning over me sister, it's sort of hard to reach the incision side." Meredith remarked.  
"Little Grey, come over, I don't mind to rub on you a little." Mark smirked and Jackson glared at him.  
"Well this is just too great." He mumbled.  
"The pressure is down." One of the nurses told them.  
"Get sponges" Owen told them "We have to get that bleeding under control if he's supposed to make it."

Two hours later the situation hadn't become any easier. "No no, I can locate the tear now, I'll hold it with my fingers" Meredith said "We can do a splenectomy."

"His stats are too bad." Owen said. "Stitch him up."  
Suddenly the monitors started beating. "He's in vfib, Meredith." Mark told her "We have to shock him. Get your hands off this artery"  
"I can't let go, his pressure would be bottoming out if I let go." Meredith said.  
"Do it, now." Mark said "Let go, we have to shock him and Derek would kill me if I shock his wife"  
"Alright, he's back" Owen said. Meredith was already leaning over the patient.  
"What are you trying to do?" Mark wondered.  
"I'm trying to fix the tear." Meredith said.  
"Meredith you need suction. Hold on" Lexie interrupted and tried to free the surgical field from any fluid, but he was already through his fourth blood bag.  
"Fixed." Meredith said after she had finished the stitches.  
"Blood pressure isn't coming up." Jackson said after waiting a few moments,"Time of death 12.35. Let's have lunch"

* * *

Callie and Arizona were standing in the living room. Callie had looked into every carton in their storage room downstairs, but figured most of her Christmas decorations were still at her parents' house.

"What are those?" Arizona wondered when Callie unpacked a box with personalized Christmas stockings.  
"Anna got them for us. Stockings for the fireplace with our names on them." Callie said. "They are actually sort of nice" While George had begged her to get Sofia for a day over Christmas, his girlfriend had just dropped off this little box a few days ago.  
"Calliope, Arizona and Sofia – what a nice idea. Why don't we put them up?" Arizona wondered.  
"The girlfriend of the guy who sues me for custody gave them to us." Callie said.  
"Well, she's trying. She told me she won't say anything in court." Arizona had met her at the hospital a few days ago.  
"She did?" Callie was surprised.  
"Yes." Arizona nodded. "I tried not to like her, but it's hard, she's actually really nice. She's a nice person and George seems happy"  
"We have to buy a Christmas tree." Callie said "The living room needs a Christmas tree."  
"Aren't we a little late?" Arizona smiled "Where are we supposed to find one now?"  
"Well, it's Christmas Eve and I have a lot of money." Callie said  
"You wanna go Christmas decoration shopping now?" Arizona asked in disbelief.  
"Yeah, our house always looked like Santa threw up in there" Callie remembered.  
"There were years when I was at the base and didn't have a Christmas tree at all, all we had was turkey on Christmas Day." Arizona smiled "But we can have decorations"

* * *

Meredith and Cristina sat in the deserted hallway. "I've seen Izzie, mom, Susan and Derek's dad while I was in the coma." Meredith said.  
"They are dead." Cristina looked at Meredith "You do realise they are dead?"  
"I know and I feel batshit crazy because of it, but I've seen them, I even talked to them. We were all in a white room without corners. And now my patient died and I feel like I'm in that room again – just this time it's just me." Meredith said "I feel like I'm in an empty room on my own – all the time."  
"Owen is mad at me because I want to work tonight." Cristina said.  
"Derek invited his whole family to our house. I mean I get it, we were supposed to come over for Thanksgiving, but why do they have to come here. It's almost like they take over – and I'm here and Derek thought it might be a good idea to start today because his sisters are flying in with their families today – and he thought I needed a little time for myself" Meredith smiled "So I'm here at work"  
"A little more time…" Cristina said "on your own"  
"Yeah" Meredith nodded.

* * *

Derek and Carolyn were standing on the deck in front of the house. "How is she?" Carolyn asked Derek after he had showed her every room in the house. It wouldn't be long until his sisters and their families would arrive in Seattle.  
"She's going to be fine. These past few months have been hard on her. I was absent. She took care of the kids by herself – and she did great. Now, it's different." Derek said. Meredith had been okay, but she wasn't happy.  
"How's Amy?" Carolyn wondered "Where is she?"  
"Good, she helped me with the kids a lot since the accident. She has grown up so much." Derek said "She's doing fine."  
"Are you sure? Addicts frequently create the illusion of a perfect life in order to cover a relapse." They heard a voice. Nancy and her kids had arrived.  
"I can assure you that Amy is fine." Derek insisted "Good to see you, Nance."  
"What about boys?" Carolyn wondered.  
"I'm not her babysitter." Derek greeted his nieces and nephews "You'd have to ask her."  
"You probably drive off everyone anyway." Nancy's husband joked when he hugged him.  
"I'm not." Derek laughed "You are early."  
"She's your babysister. You always wanted to protect her. Honestly, with everything on your plate, I don't know how you do it." Carolyn said "You raised her when I was at work and now you have to deal with Meredith's accident."  
"You live one day after the other and you tell yourself that tomorrow is going to be better. Because tomorrow needs to be better" Derek sighed "Amy stepped up."

* * *

Owen and Amelia were standing at the hospital parking lot. The air was chill, but Amelia had sat on the bench for more than half and hour.  
"Why are you still here?" Owen wondered.  
"My family is here and I can't quite get myself to drive there." Amelia admitted "My sisters and their families are coming over and I'm not exactly the family favorite. They have those perfect lives and I'm the black sheep."  
"Wow, in what kind of family does the black sheep grow up to be a neurosurgeon?" Owen joked.  
"Crazy, right? Why are you here?" Amelia wondered "Shouldn't you be at home with your girlfriend?"  
"Cristina is working and – I haven't been home since I came back from Iraq." Owen said "My mother doesn't know I'm back."  
"Why?" Amelia wondered.  
"I just thought it'd be easier -for both of us. I'm a horrible person." Owen said.  
"I'm hiding from my family." Amelia noted "Maybe we are both horrible people."  
"We could hide from our families together." Owen said "Somewhere a little warmer."  
"You realize I don't really like you." Amelia wondered.  
"Well, I'm all you have." Owen said "and you wouldn't want to stay here longer than you need in this weather."

* * *

After they had finished their shift, Lexie and Meredith drove to Meredith's house to greet the Shepherds. They walked in and were presented with a room full of people. Derek, Kathleen and Carolyn were preparing a snack in the kitchen, while most of the kids were running around the living room.

"Christ, this is like the beginning of Home Alone." Lexie whispered.  
"Except they won't be gone in the morning, Christ, I wish they were gone in the morning." Meredith joked. As she was carrying some of the boxes Lexie had bought for Zola and Christopher, Derek spotted her immediately in all the chaos.  
"Meredith, you shouldn't be carrying things You should have send out somebody to help you." He told her and took them from her. They walked over to Derek's mom  
"Hello Carolyn, good to see you. How was your trip?" Meredith wondered.  
"Oh, flight was on time, but I don't want to repeat that trip at Christmas time." Carolyn laughed "It's crazy."  
"I'll try to not be hit by a truck next year." Meredith sighed.  
"Hey, Mer. I see Lexie brought you here safe." Derek hugged his sister in law.  
"Yeah, I had my personal shuttle service." Meredith smiled.  
"How was your day?" he asked her.  
"You better don't ask. One of her patients died -and she thinks it's her fault." Lexie whispered.  
"Was it?" he wondered.  
"She had located the bleed and secured it with her hand. But then he was in v-fib and after we got him back his pressure was bottoming out before she was able to fix a tear in his splenic artery. There was nothing anyone could have done." Lexie said  
"But she thinks it's her fault nonetheless" he sighed.  
"She wouldn't talk to me about it."  
"So do you want eggnog?" Derek wondered and offered her a cup "Mom's secret recipe."  
"The secret is whiskey. Lots of Whiskey" Lizzie laughed "Good to meet you, I'm Liz."  
"Ugh, no thanks, I'll stick to water. I have to go to work tomorrow. So who is who? I don't really know your sisters." Lexie said "The short haired one is Nancy? Isn't she?"  
"Yes" Derek nodded "That one by the fireplace who is giving two twelve year olds hell, that's Nancy -and Kathleen is on the couch with her husband – I think their kids took Zola and Christopher to their rooms and Kat is at the supermarket. Her kids didn't like the cookies I made."  
"Oh I see, I like those cookies a lot." Lexie said and grabbed one "Where's Amy?"  
"Thanks! I don't know. I thought she wanted to come here with you." Derek said.

* * *

After Lizzie returned from the supermarket, the kids had woken up from their nap "Hey, oh my god, Christopher, you grew up so much since I saw you last and hello Zola, nice to meet you, I'm your aunt Lizzie." His sister Lizzie greeted them. "Hey Meredith, Nice to see you again! you look great!"  
"Considering I got hit by a truck?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, you look great." She said.  
"Don't, it's a touchy subject, Liz. She's still…" Derek whisphered into her ear.  
"I'm fine Derek, I can speak up for myself." Meredith told him "I'm fine with the fact that my surgical career is over. But there are plenty other specialties."  
"Like I said. It's a touchy subject." Lexie said.  
"Why don't we all go in? Your room is prepared. You know where it is, Derek." Meredith told him.

* * *

Owen and Amelia had moved their conversation to the bar across the hospital. The bar was packed with people who were trying to escape their homes and families. "So, I'm the youngest of five which puts me in the uncomfortable position that everyone thinks I'm a pain in the ass. My sisters have their whole life figured out -and Derek- he's always been the golden boy. So I really really don't want to be there." Amelia said.  
"Cristina said she'd be rather working than being with me on Christmas Eve." Owen said  
"What about your mother? Wouldn't it be great if you picked up your phone and called her?" Amelia wondered.  
"You could just drive to your house and join your family instead of sitting here with me." Owen suggested. "They are your family."  
"Another one`?" the bar tender asked.  
"I'll have a water." Amelia nodded.  
"So you are going to stay here all Christmas?" Owen teased her "You know that's not an option."  
"Maybe the handsome stranger over there is going to take me to his place." Amelia suggested and pointed to a guy across the room who had been looking at her for some time now "What about you – and Yang?"  
"I'll just stay here and hope time things at the hospital stay quiet. No picking up random strangers here." Owen laughed "I haven't been part of that so long. That's why I can't pick people up anymore, because I don't know how to put them back down. That's why I have no game."  
"I used to have game. - I had such game." Amelia sighed  
"- Yeah?"  
"I used to be fun and cool and sexy and go to bars and do this thing where you make eye contact once and look away. Just reel them in without a word. Such game." Amelia reminiscent about the good time she had after finishing college.  
"Hey, what was your secret?" Owen wondered.  
"Drugs.- I was on drugs." Amelia said almost jokingly.  
"- Mm." Owen made a sound, but didn't quite know how to respond. He was lucky though and Amy continued to talk about it on her own.  
"So, I'm leaving out the terrible, terrible repercussions, but ever since I got off the drugs, I've gotten worse. Now I'm just all mumbling and vomiting words and no cool, no sexy, no game at all."  
"Same here. Game over." Owen laughed "I'm almost married to a person who doesn't want to get married."  
"I want to be clear I am in no way endorsing narcotics as a dating aid" Amelia insisted.  
"Understood. So you want to have another drink?" Owen wondered.  
"That's… that's water." Amelia mumbled "Because I don't drink wine. I I don't drink at all. Not anymore. So, I ordered water, and I'm sorry. I have literally no game. I should go. It's sparkling. Hell, I should go."  
"- Mm-hmm. - Lime. Okay, wait. Amelia. Stop walking." Owen said and grabbed her hand. "I'm gonna kiss you now, so don't don't say anything." He pressed his lips against hers and whispered "And now you can go home."  
"I'm just um now I'm gonna I'm gonna go home. Which is That way." Amelia stammered and pointed to the door, but smiled and dragged Owen outside "Or we could check out if there's anything interesting in my car."

* * *

Next morning….

"Santa was here, wake up Zola" her cousin who had slept by her side tried to wake her up. "He brought presents". It was 6.00 am, but the kids had nervously awaited this moment for quite some time. They turned the light switch and opened the door. Zola shouted "Chrismas" which woke up Meredith as she heard it over the baby monitor.  
"Night's over" she sighed  
"Santa Claus is coming to town" Derek hummed and handed her a pair of elf house shoes and something that looked like a pyjama covered with a pattern of snowmen. "Welcome to a 100% original Shepherd Christmas. Lexie has one too."  
"Am I supposed to wear it?" Meredith wondered.  
"It's a family tradition." Derek suggested.  
"My family tradition is turkey in the hospital cafeteria." Meredith joked "I want to have that."  
"My mom promised to cook." Derek kissed her neck and pulled out a pullover with a reindeer on the front. "See, family tradition, you're not the only one that…"  
"looks utterly stupid." Meredith laughed "Look at yourself"  
"Hey, no joking, we are all in this together." Derek suggested "I guess we have to go, it sounds like our daughter is already trying to wake up everybody all on her own."

* * *

"Hey, I didn't realise you would be here." Lexie said when she opened the door for Mark.  
"Oh, Derek's mom basically raised me…" Mark said "Addison has Maria for Christmas"  
"and he loves all of us…" Kathleen laughed. "He wouldn't have missed this for the world."  
"Oh, Kat, look at you, still as beautiful as the day we met." Mark complimented her.  
"Mark, I was wearing glasses and braces when we met" she reminded him. "I'll grab the coat."  
"Thanks for the present by the way. It was so thoughtful – I absolutely loved it." Lexie told him.  
"I didn't get you anything." Mark noted a little confused.  
"Oh, I would have thought…" she paused and decided not to finish the sentence. "I think we should hurry, the kids want to open their presents and they made them wait until you are here, so I guess we better get inside"

* * *

Callie woke up alone. Arizona must have left in the middle of the night she thought when she saw the open closet door. "Mommy got paged, seems like it's just you and me now, baby girl." Callie whispered and lifted Sofia out of her crib. She changed her diaper and walked into the living room. It seemed like Arizona had decorated the entire place for her. There was a note on the table reading 'All I want for Christmas is you. Have fun'.  
Callie walked into the kitchen to prepare a bottle for Sofia. "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on our troubles will be out of sight." She sang while moving around with Sofia in her arms.  
"Have yourself a Merry little Christmas, let the Jule-tid be gay. From now on our troubles will be miles away." Callie kissed Sofia.  
"Here we are as in golden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us, will be near to us gather near to us once more." The timer rang and Callie poured water into the bottle while continuing to sing "through the years we all will be together if the fates allow. Hang a shining star above the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now."

When Sofia had fallen asleep after lunch, Callie grabbed the phone. "Hey dad, it's Callie, I know you probably won't answer my call if mom is there, but I just wanted to tell you, Merry Christmas and I love you."

* * *

Derek's sisters were preparing the last bits and pieces for the Christmas dinner. "this is a lovely house, but it was so quiet at night" Lizzie said  
"A lot better than the trailer, though" Nancy nodded. "God, you should have seen that."  
"Oh my God, mom" Lizzie smiled when she looked into the oven "You made those cinnamon flavoured cookies. I love them"  
"I know" Carolyn smiled.  
"and I love them" Emma -one of Lizzie's daughters- smiled "Can I have one?"  
"One, just one before dinner." Kathleen insisted.  
"You spoil her." Nancy criticised her "I wouldn't let them"  
"Richard and Dan are having a snow ball fight outside." Liz pointed out "and oh my God, Derek and my husband are there too"  
"So where's your boyfriend, Lexie?" Kathleen wondered.  
"I'm…. we split up a few weeks ago…" Lexie looked up from the coleslaw she was preparing "I don't…"  
"Can anyone get me some cranberry sauce?" Lizz asked  
"There's a glass in the fridge." Meredith said "I'll get it"  
"Has anyone seen Amelia in this mad house?" Kathleen wondered "We've been here for almost a day and there's still no sight of her. Are you sure she's really living here?"  
"I've seen her in surgery -yesterday." Lexie smiled.  
"and at least one of you still made it in time for Christmas Day dinner." Nancy rolled her eyes "When is this ever going to end?"  
"She might have been paged, why don't you give her the benefit of a doubt?" Meredith looked at Amy's oldest sistzer.  
"Because everytime we did, she wasted her chance to prove that she can be a functioning adult." Nancy spat back.  
"She was top at her class in Harvard, she did her residency at John Hopkins." Meredith tried to defend her.  
"She came crying to her brother because nobody else would take her for a fellowship position" Nancy laughed.  
"You don't know her." Meredith said.  
"I'm her sister." Nancy insisted.  
"and Meredith has been living and working with her." Lizzie tried to calm them down "Maybe she changed"  
"Or maybe Meredith is a hoodlum too."  
"Nancy" Lizzie looked at her in shock while there was a noice at the door. Someone was trying to unlock the door.

All eyes were turned on her when Amelia walked in. Her hair was messy and she was still wearing the clothes she had worn yesterday. "Shit" Amelia whispered when she looked at all of them.

"There are children in the room, it's bad enough they see you on your walk of shame. Why do you have to use those words?" Nancy asked. "You look hungover and smell like you've been clubbing all night"  
"I'll get a shower" Amelia said "I'll be ready before dinner."  
"well, we all helped cooking the food" Nancy glanced at her  
"and I'll entertain the guests" Amelia suggested before she went up to her room "I was never really good at cooking, was I?"

* * *

"Merry Christmas, I brought you some pudding from the cafeteria" Bailey smiled "and there's some soup and I bought chocolade cake" Bailey said and walked into the house.  
"I don't feel like eating" Richard said "and the kids are coming over"  
"Come on, I know they are not coming" Bailey said "what's the matter? Where's Adele?"  
"I'm alone." Richard nodded. He had felt the whole extend of solitude today "Adele… she's at Roseridge. She was diagnosed with Alzheimers. It's the reason Meredith is my emergency contact"  
"Does she know?" Bailey wondered.  
"Most of the days she doesn't remember she has a husband." Richard said "But then again, most days she doesn't even remember that I cheated on her. Why are you not with Tuck?"  
"He's with his father this Christmas." Bailey sighed "and I only have an hour until my next shift starts. So, happy Christmas"

* * *

The Shepherds had headed to the city to go ice skating after dinner. They were driving in circles one round after the other while Meredith and Carolyn stood at the side and looked at them.  
"They are having so much fun. I never knew Derek was a good ice skater." Meredith smiled. She was lookin at Derek and his sisters and their families. Even Zola and Chris were trying to make their first attempts on the ice.  
"He played hockey in high school." Carolny said "He was pretty good until one day- he just came home and told me he quit. He never told me why" After a short moment of listening to carol singers not too far from the ice track, Carolyn said "I'm sorry you lost it, Meredith."  
"I beg your pardon" Meredith said surprised.  
"You were pregnant when you came to my house, and I had been waiting for news, but now you are not and… the accident… it must have been hard" she stroked Meredith's hand.  
"I lost it. Six weeks into the pregnancy, but Derek only found out a few weeks before the accident." Meredith said "I didn't really know how to tell him. It was just too painful"  
"Are you okay?" Carolyn wondered.  
"There are days when I don't think about it, but sometimes I'm thankful because Zola and Chris are a handful as it is without adding another child and sometimes I cry and think about what kind of person she would have grown up to be – I feel empty. I learned to live with it." Meredith said "and now I try to learn to live with that accident."  
"It takes time – and it never fully stops. Derek's dad. I never stopped wondering what kind of person Amy and Derek would have become if …" she stopped.  
"they hadn't seen the shooting, if the shooting hadn't happened." Meredith nodded.  
"I don't know if it's a good idea she's staying in Seattle. She's so far away. All they've been doing is fight and argue…" Carolyn said, but Meredith interrupted her.  
"They give each other crap and then they laugh about it. It's never been like this for me, but they seem to work it out. "  
"You remind me of Amelia so much, Meredith." Carolyn said "We used to call her hurricane Amelia."  
"What do you mean?" Meredith was surprised.  
"You just do" Carolyn said "and if you let her in a little bit more, you would notice it. You are runners, you are impulsive, you are…"  
"dark and twisty?" Meredith giggled and Carolyn looked at her with more questions than before "It's something Cristina and I say. What did Amelia run from?"  
"Her fiancé." Carolyn said.  
"Amelia was engaged? She never mentioned it." Meredith said.  
"Oh, she never mentioned it to me either" Carolyn said "Don't mention it to her, but her fiancé showed up at my house after she left him. He was an ER doctor at Hopkins."  
"Where she did her residency… So she ran." Meredith nodded "Everything became too much and she ran. I get that."  
"Do me a favour and try to stop Derek and Amy from killing each other." Carolyn smiled.  
"I'll do my best, but I think they are doing pretty good." Meredith suggested.  
"Are you sure you don't want to join them?" Carolyn wondered.  
"No, I'll just watch from a safe distance. I had a traumatic brain injury not too long ago, don't want to add another one." Meredith laughed.

* * *

Before starting her shift Meredith headed to the attending lounge where she hoped to find Amelia. Carolyn had asked her to take care of her and that's what she wanted to do. Fortunately she found her earlier. "Where have you been the last couple of days? I was alone with your sisters. I repeat your sisters." Meredith wondered when she saw Amelia walking down the surgical floor in her scrubs.  
"They don't like me." Amelia said and walked into the scrub room.  
"They don't like me neither." Meredith reminded her "Nancy made derogatory comments about me all through dinner. You should have been there for dinner last night– you haven't been in surgery – I checked that and you haven't been home before Christmas dinner."  
"I was out with a friend." Amelia said "It got late, so I stayed at the hospital."  
"Do I know that friend?" Meredith wondered.  
"No you don't." Amelia said.

"Do I like that friend very much? Is his name Jose Cuervo?" Meredith teased her. "I hope it isn't… because Jose is mine."  
"Why are you doing this to me? I thought you had my back." Amelia started to react harshly.  
"That wasn't your jacket – I know that jacket – I've seen this jacket before" Meredith said.  
"It's a god damn jacket, Meredith!" Amelia yelled. She knew that Meredith would hate her if she knew.  
"It isn't. If it was, you would have told me." Meredith handed Amelia her scrub cap, but Amelia stopped her at the door.  
"I don't want you in my OR" Amelia said "go and find someone else"

* * *

"Why are there four stockings on the fireplace this year?" Sophie wondered "There only used to be three."  
"Well, George is living here too. Shouldn't he get something from Santa too?" Anna asked her daughter.  
"Daddy is not living with us" Sophie said "Why is his stocking still here?"  
"Don't you want it there? Don't you want him to know that we are thinking about him if he looks down on us from heaven?" Anna wondered. Sometimes she wondered whether she was the only one that still wanted him to be a part in her daughter's life. She had never met him.  
"He isn't living with us though, maybe he has his own stocking." Sophie insisted. "It's heaven, I'm sure they have their own fireplaces up there."  
"I guess you are right, kiddo" Anna nodded "Maybe we can send it to him next year."  
"I like that George is living with us" the girl said and sat down on the couch with one of her new puzzles.

* * *

The night shift on Boxing Day was always busy and to get a chance celebrate Christmas together was rare. Meredith, Lexie, Cristina, Alex, Jackson and George sat at Joeys before their shift to toast to another year of residency. Cristina was complaining about the fact that Owen hadn't been home since Christmas Eve and Alex wasn't talking at all. "The Shepherds went ice skating" Meredith said "Well -all the Shepherds except Amelia."  
"Owen hasn't been home last night. I finished early and he wasn't there. Great night" Cristina said "I sat in our apartment and stared at the Christmas tree. Which he wanted to buy"  
"There are way too many Shepherd's in my house" Meredith sat again.  
"Anna and Sophie are visiting her mother" George said.  
"My brother attacked my mother with a knife." Alex said like it was the most normal thing in the world "My sister is coming to live with me."  
Meredith turned her head. "Your sister Amber? Your teenage sister Amber? Why? What happened?"  
"I wasn't in Iowa to visit my family over Christmas." Alex said "The police called and I was there to get my brother admitted. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He attacked our mother with a knife. Amber needs someone."  
"You don't want her to end up in the system, I can understand. Are you sure you can handle the situation? I mean you haven't been around since med school and she isn't the cute ten year old.  
I'll have to figure it out. I'm the only family she has since our father walked out." Meredith wondered.  
"I would have been happy to have had an older brother like you." George said encourangely.  
"I need your consent, your written consent. You are my landlord and the social worker is coming on Friday to check out this death trap." Alex told Meredith and handed over the form.  
"You can redo the nursery. I don't think we need it any longer." Meredith smiled.  
"Yeah, the kids grew up. They can sleep in a normal bed now." George nodded. "It won't be long until Sofia will start to walk."  
"They can, and don't worry. You'll figure out how to take care of Amber." Meredith smiled  
"She's a Karev. She's going to be fine as long as there is food in the fridge." Alex laughed.  
"You better start going grocery shopping in that case cause I sort of remember that you were particularly bad when it came to remembering it was your turn to do it." Meredith reminded him  
"Shut up!" he said while everyone else laughed.  
"No I'm right. I won't shut up. Lexie, Alex never buys food, does he?" Meredith looked at her sister who hadn't said a word since they arrived.  
"I don't think he ever has" Lexie mumbled.  
"Not since I moved in" Jackson nodded  
"Shut up, all of you!" Alex said "I have to get changed"

* * *

He had been alone all night, all day, all week. Ever since he had been discharged from the hospital to continue his chemo treatment as an out patient procedure, he had been alone. Richard sat in his living room and was surprised when he heard the door bell. Even though he wasn't expecting anyone, he decided to open the door. "Oh the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful, and since we've no place to go, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Bailey sang and walked in with Tucker. She noticed that there weren't any Christmas decorations in the house and that he was alone again.  
"It doesn't show signs of stopping, And I've bought some corn for popping, the lights are turned way down low, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" the boy continued. "When we finally kiss goodnight, How I'll hate going out in the storm! But if you'll really hold me tight, All the way home I'll be warm."  
"Hello Dr. Webber, I thought you might like some turkey and sweet potato casserole." She smiled and brought the dishes into the kitchen while Tucker followed her still humming "The fire is slowly dying, And, my dear, we're still good-bying, but as long as you love me so, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"  
"I thought he was with his dad" the Chief noted.  
"He got an earlier flight." Bailey smiled.  
"So what are you doing here?" Richard noted "I'm fine."  
"I know that you're fine" Bailey said "but it's Christmas and Christmas is the time where you should make people feel loved and appreciated."

* * *

Meredith sat at the nurse station when Alex walked up to her "What's the matter? I'm away for a week and you're not on the OR board and…"  
"I killed a patient" Meredith looked at Alex. It was one of those slow nights in which the tranquillity of Christmas had taken over.  
"You didn't" Alex paused "your patients never die".  
"Well, he's dead. No heart beat dead." Cristina put down her charts on the desk next to them.  
"Are you talking about John Doe who came in after driving off a bridge?" George wondered.  
"I'm talking about the guy who just bled out in front of me the day before yesterday because I couldn't get the suture to hold. I wasn't fast enough." Meredith said "I got lazy. I should have practiced this suture more often before coming back. I was just too slow and god, this sucks. You forgot it happened already."  
"Mer I'm sure this wasn't your fault." George tried to cheer her up, but Alex told them to leave.  
"It was. Before the accident it wouldn't have been like this. I shouldn't have been in there. They cleared me too early. My motor function isn't nearly where it has to be and everyone here is too afraid to admit to me that… I suck" Meredith said "– and nobody here cares. Nobody cares that there hasn't been anybody who has claimed his body. He's dead and there's nobody that cares, but I care and I don't know how to make it stop. I don't think I can do it anymore."  
"Callie got back. Look where she is now. Give it time and talk to Derek! You have options!" Alex said  
"I killed a patient, Alex." Meredith repeated "He's dead because of me and I keep seeing his face and I wonder who he sees."  
"You survived! All this crap you've been through – you survived. I had to pull you out of the water once- you have somebody who will pull you out of the ocean now." Alex said "It wasn't your fault and Derek will listen."  
"I was afraid to tell them that I didn't feel ready." Meredith said "I keep wondering whether I'm crazy. I talked to Izzie when I was in a coma, Izzie and Susan and Ellis and Derek's dad. I might be going insane"  
"Mer, if you feel like your hand isn't going to be like it was, you have to talk to Derek or Amelia. I don't care, just get a neurosurgeon to look at it" Alex said "I'll fix my problem with the social worker and you'll get your hand fixed. Christ, I hate this time of the year"

* * *

Callie walked into Dr. Wyatts office. "Callie, how are you?" the therapist wondered "How did you spend the day?"  
"Arizona was paged to the hospital at night, there's always some sort of emergency in peds, so I was alone with Sofia when she woke up. – and when I woke up – it felt like Christmas – and we danced in front of the Christmas tree. I held her and we danced. I baked cookies and it felt great. I felt great."  
"Today you choose life. Every morning when you wake up you can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain..." The therapist said "To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today you choose to feel life, not to deny your humanity but embrace it. I think we are ready here. You can do the rest of the way by yourself, Callie."  
"This is our last session?" Callie asked surprised.  
Dr. Wyatt nodded "This is our last session. Merry Christmas"

* * *

Meredith stood in the morgue. "There was nothing you could have done." Owen said when he walked in on Meredith.  
"If I had been faster, he would have lived." Meredith looked at his grey cold body.  
"Meredith, he was dead before he got here." Owen said "It's your first day back and I shouldn't have paged you. If it's anybody's fault- it's mine"  
"He wasn't. He died on our table and it's my fault." Meredith insisted "You asked me to patch up that tear – and I didn't. I know how to sew up vascular structures, - I just wasn't fast enough."  
"It's not about him, is it? What is it about? Your hand?" Owen wondered.  
"My hand, the huge scar on the back of my hand, but… I saw things and… I don't know how to be a surgeon anymore." She looked at Owen "I don't get how you do it. Nobody claimed his body."  
"That scar will fade Meredith. The pain is going to get smaller – less noticeable." He looked at the body "he wasn't in pain when he died."  
"I don't know how what it's for anymore. I don't know. I mean I see things different now." Meredith paused and looked at the chart again. Owen pointed to a few stats with his fingers.  
"He would have died no matter who had tried to fix him, Meredith." He said. "Take the scalpel, I'll show you why he couldn't have been saved."  
Meredith did as she was told, she pressed the scalpel onto the incision line and cut him open again when her hand suddenly started shaking. "I have a tremor." Meredith said "in the other hand"  
"Maybe you should talk to Derek about this" Owen said.

* * *

"How are you?" Meredith looked at Derek who had stopped his car in their driveway.  
"Three of my sisters and their families in the same place. It's intense, but I'm great. How are you?" he asked.  
"Three of your sisters and their families are in my living room." Meredith smiled, but he could tell that there was something on her mind.  
"I love you, that's all that matters. Isn't it? We'll get through this." Derek kissed her forehead.  
"I don't know. Derek, there's too much in my life… too much going on. Sometimes it feels like I can't breathe." Meredith started to cry. "I don't think I want to be a surgeon anymore. I just don't see a point. All we do is cut und cut and we hope to repair the damage by cutting, but we never actually … I don't see a point in getting up every morning, driving to the hospital, getting crapped at by insurances, patients and the administration, it's so hard.  
"How long are you feeling that way?" Derek wondered.  
"Since the accident. You want me to be a surgeon, and I only just got back to work but I don't know if I can go back to being a surgeon. I'd be fine with staying at home and raising the kids." Meredith admitted.  
"You wouldn't be. Don't pretend that the high you are getting in the OR isn't the greatest feeling in the world." Derek told her.  
"Derek, it isn't. The greatest feeling in the world is looking into our kids' eyes – seeing you in them." Meredith insisted. "When I woke up after the accident looking into their eyes was all I wanted. So I'm asking you are you still going to love me if I don't go back?"  
"When you were in the coma all I wanted was a chance to talk to you again and I'm fine with whatever you decide. I'll be there for you." Derek nodded.

* * *

The departure area at the airport was busy. Everyone was flying home or giving their loved ones a lift to the airport. Carolyn Shepherd had asked him to take her because according to her there was no place for her in the taxis her children and grandchildren had taken. "Mark, you can't. Not unless you are all in. I know you love her" Carolyn whispered when Mark hugged her to say goodbye.  
"Who?" Mark wondered "What are you talking about?"  
"Meredith's sister." She paused and looked at him. He was just as much her son as Derek was. "I've seen the way you look at her."  
"She's young." Mark said.  
"You need young." She smiled.  
"I'm just not sure if I should." Mark sighed "I mean after how things ended with Addison, I sort of thought that… I wasn't meant to have that.- and now I don't really know what I want"  
"get out of the house, date, find out what you want." She said "There's nothing wrong with not knowing! You always felt like you don't deserve to be happy. You do Mark, you do! Thanks for taking me to the airport"  
"We could have rented a bus now that I thik about it" he joked "Have a safe journey."

* * *

Alex and a teenage girl were standing in front of his home. He had just picked her up from the airport after she had stuffed her life into two suitcases before she moved half way across the country. "So this is the house. There are a few people living there, but they are at work. There are a few rules. We divide chores and you have to do as much as anyone else." Alex started to explain "Tomorrow we are going to register you at highschool. I already took care of your transcript and the counsellor said it looked fine, so you are going to be a senior.  
"It's really big and a nice neighborhood." Amber said "You must be making a lot of dough."  
"It's my friend's house, but she let's everyone live there." Alex smiled. Meredith had never cared a lot about how many people were living underneath that roof.  
"So that's why I'm here" Amber coughed.  
"No, you are here because I want to make sure that you are not stuck in the foster system." Alex looked at her.  
"I'm almost eighteen." She insisted.  
"You might not remember a lot because you were very small, but I was in too many foster families Way too many." Alex told her harshly "and believe me, you wouldn't want to be in any of those."  
"And who are you to me?" Amber spat out "You ain't doing me a favour. You left when I was ten. – and you never came back. You are a stranger to me, you took me across the country in my senior year."  
"I sent you money and meds. I didn't know he was schizophrenic." Alex said "I'm sorry you had to see that."  
"I was in the room when he attacked her. It was terrifying" Amber admitted "What happens if I'm like them?"  
"I know and I'm sorry you had to see that. But I …" he paused "I didn't know and I want you to be here with me, I want to help you. We could get you tested, but you know, I might get it too. There's no way to tell." They slowly moved up the stairs and Amber looked around.  
"So where's my room?" she wondered.  
"second on the right." Alex said.

* * *

"Wait, Jackson! Please" Lexie closed her eyes and hoped that Jackson would stop walking away. They had just finished their shift and gotten changed without exchanging a word.  
"What do you want, Lex?" Jackson asked harshly.  
"You got me a Christmas gift. I wanted to thank you." Lexie said "It was a lovely gift."  
"I bought it when we were still dating -I figured I might as well give it to you" Jackson explained "I had no use for it anyway."  
"How did you know?" Lexie wondered. She had wanted a 19th century scalpel for ages.  
"You mentioned your dad had one in his desk once" Jackson said.  
Lexie looked down "See Jackson, you probably don't care now and … but… I'm sorry I kissed Mark. I was sad and…the situation…I'm sorry."  
"I kissed April" Jackson said "after we broke up."  
"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you two were a thing" Lexie said "I wouldn't have…"  
Jackson interrupted her "oh we aren't… but I got to go. Bye."

* * *

"Derek, I don't have a feeling in my right hand. There's like a tickling sensation, but it's like I can't really control it. We have to get it checked out." Meredith said "It's not the left, it's the right hand."  
"The nerves in your hand haven't been affected. It might be psychosomatic."  
"I know it isn't." Meredith insisted "Today during surgery I had a tremor, in my right hand. I wish it was all in my head"  
"We'll do an exam tomorrow. CT, MRI, every test in the book until we find out what's wrong with you and I'm going to fix it." Derek kissed her "or we could go back to the hospital and do all of those things now."  
"You can't perform surgery on me, Derek. I'm your wife. They won't allow it." Meredith reminded him.  
"In that case you'll get the second best neurosurgeon in the country." Derek promised "but I can do the exam."  
"Wow, you and your ego." Meredith smiled and looked at Derek who got dressed. "You really want us to leave now?"  
"Yes" Derek nodded and handed her a sweater. "I'm going to call the head of neurosurgery at Mt. Sinai. I trained him."  
"What if there's nothing he can do?" Meredith wondered.  
"We won't know until we had a look at that hand" Derek tried to lighten Meredith's mood "But in that case you are still going to be an amazing doctor. You could focus on research."  
"You are still going to love me?" Meredith looked up from the bed to Derek's closet  
"I'm always going to love you." He said "Let's go"

* * *

"Why is Mer in the CT?" Cristina wondered when he saw Alex talking to Mer who was getting a CT  
"he didn't tell you?" Alex looked up from the screen.  
"No" Cristina said and sat down next to Alex who scrolled to the images that conveyed the location of a tiny aneurysm that had formed in her arm and was now pressing against a nerve.  
"Her hand. Her right hand, it's tickling and there's something" Alex said pointing to a black spot.  
"Is this why she…?" Cristina stopped.  
"Hunt told you?" Alex wondered "I thought you guys weren't talking."  
"Yeah, we talk about things." Cristina nodded "But Meredith doesn't talk to me- I don't know why. We talk about her kids or medicine, but since the accident it's different."  
"They have to find something." Alex said  
"They better do." Cristina said "But I'm sure Derek called one of his hot shot neurosurgeon friends.

* * *

"What are you doing? You have surgery in twenty minutes!" Meredith looked around Derek's office. The room was dimly lit by about fifty candles. Secretly Meredith wondered how many hospital protocols the Chief of Surgery had just violated shortly before vacating this premise.  
"I believe that when you find love, you have to hold on to it and cherish it because there's nothing finer and it may never come again. Happy New Year Meredith!" Derek kissed her while he packed the last boxes in his office.  
"Thanks! I love you Derek and… you know… it's easy to love someone when they are happy, but it's harder when that person cries in the bathroom at 2.00 am in the morning after everything came crushing in on them. SO thanks!" Meredith said "Thanks for being there when things got tough"  
"Next year will be better." Derek promised."But you need that surgery. There's a tiny aneurism in your arm that is pressing against your nerve. I already called Patrick. We'll fly to New York on Saturday?"  
"New York?" Meredith asked in surprise "I thought we talked about this."  
"Yeah, you are going to have surgery. Patrick is the best. I trained him. I trust him. It's almost like I'm in the OR doing the procedure" Derek insisted.  
"I'm scared. If something goes wrong, I'm brain dead or can't move my arm." Meredith stated "Why do we have to do it?"  
"I don't want your nerve to get damaged permanently. We were lucky we caught it. I'm scared too, but you'll get through this." Derek went up to her and took her into his loving arms "You'll be holding a scalpel before you know it."  
"Don't tell me about the best possible outcome. I'm not a best possible outcome person." Meredith smiled at him.  
"Good things happen to us, Meredith. I have you, you have me and we have two beautiful kids." He said and took her hand. "You are going to have surgery and I'll show you every single corner in New York, the places I loved and you can come to a congress with me."

* * *

 _It's hard to give second chances. It's even harder to ask for them. A chance to do it again, knowing what you know now, what you've learned. A chance to do it completely differently. A chance to right our wrongs, to try and correct our mistakes. A chance to try and start over, from scratch._

* * *

"Thanks for the jacket" Amelia smiled and handed over Owen's jacket.  
"No problem, thanks." He said. "it was a nice evening."  
"So here we are" Amelia rambled after a moment of silence. "in a supply closet at our place of work. There was something I wanted to talk to you about though."  
"Yeah… Cristina she…"  
"can't know about us. She can't. This was a stupid stupid accident." Amelia nodded. "This shouldn't have happened because you have a girlfriend and I…" Owen's lips touched hers and her lips started moving until her tongue started moving. This was far away from nothing ever happening again.  
"Owen, we can't." she whispered almost breathless.  
"I know" he agreed, but continued nonetheless.  
"No, no, Owen, I'm serious. Your lips are like wine and I can't have wine." Amelia insisted with a firm voice. "I can't" she whispered while exiting the room.  
Owen sat down on the floor. He was alone and looking at this jacket. It was his favorite jacket, but he couldn't look at it right now. After a few minutes he was paged and left the room. He thought the air was clear, but Meredith had seen the jacket, she knew.


	50. Chapter 50

Thanks everyone for all the reviews! I'm so thrilled that so many people are still enjoying this story.

The big 50! Wow! Meredith is slowly healing, Owen's and Cristina's relationship is changing and new characters are making a first impression. If you want to know where Lexie and Jackson are going, I can recommend their last conversation in this chapter ;) But this isn't the only dynamic I'm going to explore, I hope you'll enjoy the arrival of the new Chief of surgery.

* * *

chapter 50

 _Trauma is messy. Chaotic. Looking at a body that's been reduced to a bloody pulp, it might seem difficult to know where to start. Luckily, some very clever person developed a protocol: the ABCs: Airway, breathing, circulation. The ABCs keep your patient alive so you can figure out how to tackle the rest of the mess. If only all of life's problems could be solved with an intubation tube._

One week later…

"What are we going to do all week?" Meredith wondered "I've never been idle for so long – well not since the summer before Med School."  
"Well, I'm here for a few tumours and we will go to a conference on Friday and Saturday." Derek said "and you'll be busy enough"  
"There's not much point in me going, is there?" Meredith wondered "I mean; I still have this tremor whenever I try to do something with that hand."  
"There is. I insist." Derek said "As your boss, I'm telling you that I insist that you come to that conference with me."  
"Derek, I don't get why you'd insist on me going to that conference. I will never be a surgeon again. The surgery didn't improve anything. The aneurysm might be gone, but my hand didn't get any better" Meredith's eyes filled with tears and her hand was shaking "- it doesn't help to listen to you talking about the brain cell trial. I have a tremor that isn't going away…"  
"It's been merely a week. The nerve might take some time to regenerate." Derek hugged her and kissed her forehead "And you were the one that worked with Dr. Springer and me, that's why I think you deserve it."  
"Well, it might as well not regenerate, that's the kind of thing that happens to me." Meredith said.  
"Don't say that, Mer. You are gifted. You have a gift, don't waste it." Derek said.  
"Why do you want me to be a surgeon? Why is it not enough to be just your wife?" Meredith cried.  
"You have a natural intuition of what to do in the OR. You stay calm, calmer than any other surgeon I know. Don't waste all of this talent. Just give it time. Fight!" Derek said  
"I'm tired of fighting." Meredith felt beaten.  
"This time I'll fight with you, Meredith! Just try it!" Derek said "and don't do those stupid exercises all the time. You need to relax"  
"I can't be a surgeon, Derek! I see that guy's face. That guy is dead because I wasn't good enough." Meredith said "So whether my hand gets better or not, I can't go back in there."  
"I'll say this as your mentor, not your husband: It feels like you don't want to be a surgeon, Meredith! Don't waste all of this training, all of those hours, if you are not good enough, get better. Think about why you'd want to get better." Derek said "and as your husband I'd tell you the very same thing."  
"I'm realistic Derek. I can never get back the…" Meredith said and looked at her hand.  
"You are impatient. It's been a week since you had the surgery. Everything will sort itself out. Everything is going to be…"  
"fine? Maybe for you." Meredith spat out "For me it won't. I can't do my job. The job I loved. Don't you think this is bothering me? Go please, just go!"

* * *

Alex and Amber were sitting in the living room. "Amber, don't give me an attitude!" Alex yelled.  
"It's not an attitude, Alex. I just don't know what I want to do." Amber screamed back at him "There's no point in applying for college if you don't have a clue."  
"You might figure it out until fall and you'll be sorry you haven't applied." Alex said "I want you to have options."  
"Alex, you aren't my dad. You don't get a say in this." Amber insisted "I hate you."  
"I'm your guardian." Alex yelled at her "You can you be lucky I took you in."  
Amber looked at him and moved her mouth without saying something until "But this isn't your decision besides I could just go and do community college." slipped from her lips.  
"Amber, the application is almost finished, all you have to do is write one personal essay." Alex said "I don't get why you don't write this stupid essay."  
"What am I going to write about, Alex?" Amber wondered and walked over to the fridge "The fact that my brother had to take me in after my schizo brother tried to stab my schizo mom and that my dad is a dead beat who eft when I was too small to remember? Is that something you want me to write about?"  
"Okay, fine. Let's say you don't go to college. What are you going to do? Because I won't pay for whatever you have in mind." Alex said.  
"I don't know Alex. Two months ago I was in Iowa and the thought of moving half way across the country never crossed my mind. Why don't you cut me some slack?" Amber wondered.  
"Because sometimes life moves on, no matter if you are ready for it or not." Alex said and grabbed her arm. He tried to pull her onto the chair. "I know this sucks, but I have to be the adult here, so you'll sit down here and write that essay."  
"You really think that's going to work?" Amber asked and got up. She walked passed the hall, grabbed her coat and slammed the door.

* * *

The next day

Lexie was sitting in the resident lounge combing her hair and covering her dark eyes with makeup. "What's the matter with you, Grey?" Cristina teased her "Sloan asking you out on a double date with Teddy?"  
"New Chief's coming today." Lexie said "I heard Dr. Walter talking about him."  
"Dr. Matthew Sanders, head of general surgery at ." Alex nodded.  
"My grandpa was so sorry he left. He was one of the first residents Ellis Grey trained. – well until she quit and went to Hopkins." Jackson said.  
"Was he the guy that interviewed her?" April wondered.  
"No, he was the guy she slept with to spite her mother." George laughed.  
"How do you know?" Cristina looked at both of them.  
"We talk. About the things she can't talk about with you." George said  
"Ellis left Boston in 1996." Jackson nodded "He's way older than Meredith."  
"She always slept with guys who were way older than her. Must be genetic" Alex said "I mean, you and Sloan – your dad and his new chick and she and him."  
"It's not." Lexie stuttered defensive.  
"You are having the hots for Dr. Sloan." Alex said, but Jackson stepped in to her rescue.  
"Shut up, Alex."

* * *

Dr. Bailey was waiting in front of the elevator when a blonde man in a suit approached her "Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find Dr. Shepherd?"  
"I'm afraid I can't." she said sharply. It was early in the morning and she didn't have her coffee yet.  
"Then get me something who can." Sanders said "You're a nurse right, I'm sure you know how to get me someone who can page him."  
"I recommend you to take a plane to New York if you want to talk to him." Miranda suggested while the elevator doors opened. "and I'm a surgeon by the way."  
"New York?" he asked surprised.  
"Private business. His wife is having surgery. Why do you care?" Dr. Bailey wondered.  
"I'm the new Chief of surgery." The man said.  
"You're the Chief? Oh…" Dr. Bailey was taken by surprised. She never stammered, but now she did "Miranda Bailey. General surgery."  
"Can you show me to my office, Dr. Bailey?" he asked when they reached the fourth floor.  
"Sure." She nodded.

* * *

Derek walked in to a skills lab at Mt. Sinai and looked at Meredith who was practicing sutures. She didn't notice him until he reached out from behind. "My hand, Derek. I'm trying to practice here" she looked up and noticed he was still wearing the sweaty scrubs he had been in the past 15 hours.

"Well, you could practice some other place." He whispered "I need a shower"  
"You are disgusting." Meredith tried to push him away.  
"No, I just know how to combine work and pleasure." He smirked.  
"You are impossible." She laughed "I'm practicing double layers here.  
"I love you Meredith, -and I was wondering whether you'd like to scrub in with me tomorrow – "he smiled "butterfly tumour."  
"I'm not ready." She said and put away the instruments.  
"Alright, you and Nancy could take the kids to Central Park." He smiled.  
"Nancy wants to spend time with me?" Meredith asked in disbelief.  
"She's coming over and she asked me – and I'm in surgery." Derek said.  
"Fine, I'll do it. I'm sure it's fun. I'm sure your sister…" she paused and looked at Derek. He remained silent and Meredith started to laugh "I can't think of one nice thing to say about her. Honestly, I think she's my least favourite sister."  
"Oh, she's my favourite sister." Derek smirked.  
"You say that to all of them." Meredith reminded him.  
"-and they tend to believe me because I'm their favourite brother." He was making goofy jokes and it worked.  
"I… oh, you are impossible." She smiled.  
"Impossibly handsome and turns out I'm really hard not to fall in love with once you get to know me." He nodded.  
"So there is an amazing place for waffles down the road, I was wondering whether we can go there" Meredith asked "-after you had a shower."  
"How often have you been there?" Derek wondered.  
"Three times. The kids love it." Meredith had taken the kids to have lunch with him for the past four days when he was doing consults on rare tumour cases he was working on with his former fellow.  
"They sure do" He nodded "So this is how you spend all my hard earned money while recovering from surgery."  
"Yeah, and their chocolate milk is lovely." Meredith nodded. "I have to quit now anyway, because my hand usually starts to shake after 65 minutes, so I'm on a clock here."

* * *

All interns and residents had gathered in the auditorium. Sanders wanted to introduce the immediate changes he wanted to implement "A lot of things need to change and I'll change them. This hospital is going to be the No.1 on the West Coast again and you'll be the teachers. The increase in class room time is going to be accompanied by an increase in OR time where you are going to perform the procedures we focused on during class."  
"We have to teach interns again?" Alex leaned over to Cristina "It's almost our final year, I have more important things to worry about than interns."  
"Teaching interns is going to remind you of all the important lessons you learnt during your intern year. You are going to revise basic surgeries and you are going to be the ones that supervise the interns while they are performing them." Sanders continued on the stage.  
"Great, wasting hours of our lives babysitting interns who attempt to kill patients during appendectomies." Cristina coughed.  
"You think about it as wasted time but I want to emphasise that their outcomes are your outcomes." Sanders continued on the stage.  
"You can be glad that you are a 3rd year, Lexie." April sighed.  
"Do you really think Mer slept with him?" Lexie wondered.  
"Is this all you are worried about?" Jackson looked at her.  
"Her brain and her heart are in her vagina, don't blame her she's a medical phenomenon" Alex teased Lexie.  
"We should tell him what happened the last time we had interns, maybe we get out of it." Cristina joked.

* * *

Alex starred through the room and was absent when Bailey gave her instructions. He had been assigned to her service for the week. She flipped her fingers in front of him "What's the matter, Karev?"  
"Amber, she's the matter. I took her in and I thought it would be easier, but I'm responsible for her and it's hard. It's so hard -and we used to be so close, but now she's mad at me all the time and it feels like I'm failing." He said "Sorry, I didn't mean to…"  
"Honey, if she's mad at you, it means that you are her parent and right now you are supposed to be her parent, so you are doing everything right." Miranda smiled and handed him the charts "Tuck tells me he hates me at least twice a day when he doesn't get his will -and you better get into the skills lab and prepare those procedures".  
"I never thought it'd be this hard, I mean – before I went to college I used to cook and clean and look after her, but mom was there and now she hates me." He said.

* * *

When April saw Allen Sanders in the Er, she walked up to him "Dr. Sanders, April Kepner, 4th year resident, I read your article in the American Journal of General Surgery on the superiority of the laparoscopic approach for the treatment of acute appendicitis in minors." April said enthusiastically and extended her hand to Dr. Sanders "It was so inspirational- and I was wondering…"  
But he smiled and didn't shake her hand "I don't want you to have to wash your hands again. Don't you want to see what your interns are doing? They seem to be unable to do a central line."  
"Oh my God, what the hell are you doing?" April turned around and looked at the girl who seemed to be more nervous than she had been on her first day.  
"I… I…" the intern looked at her.  
"Oh my God, let me do it myself." Sanders said after observing April and her intern for a minute

* * *

It was 6.00 pm and Amber was sitting in the cafeteria with Maria "Come on, sweetie, it's time to have dinner."  
"Who are you?" Mark asked when he approached both of them.  
"Who are you?" Amber asked him.  
"The father of the child you are with." Mark smiled.  
"You are Dr. Sloan, right?" Amber said and pointed her finger at him "Alex was paged and he left her with me. I'm Amber, Alex is my brother."  
"You look young." Mark noted.  
"Well, I am young." Amber smiled.  
"Freshman in college young?" Mark smiled.  
"Senior…" Amber blared out "Senior in high school. Want to sit?"  
"Oh, you're a little too young." Mark smiled.  
"Ugh, and you are way too old. Gross!" Amber said and looked at him "I thought you would like to have lunch with your daughter – that's why I asked. – and for the record- you remind me of my best friend's dad."  
"I never realised Karev had a sister." Mark said. "Have you ever babysat before?"  
"Do I look like anybody would trust me with their kids?" Amber asked him.  
"No" he laughed.  
"See." She smiled.  
"But I'm going to sit down here anyway"

* * *

"He's my patient Amelia" Owen said and grabbed the chart.  
"Well, your intern paged me because your patient needed a neuro consult" Amy said and pulled it back from his hands.  
"Why are two people on my surgical staff yelling at each other?" Sanders wondered.  
"She was talking to my girlfriend" Owen said.  
"Your girlfriend's intern paged me" Amelia pointed out.  
"Well, because you don't have a clue what's going on here. He is a self-righteous idiot" Amelia yelled. "Maybe you should hire a new ER doctor. We are so understaffed our surgical interns are here too often. If you are serious about your teaching concept, you should hire a proper ER doctor."

* * *

"Why are you drinking like there's no tomorrow?" Jackson said and pulled the glass of Vodka out of April's hand.  
"Day One and I already screwed up in front of the new Chief thanks to my interns. I'm so screwed. I'll probably get fired" she mumbled.

"April, what happened?" Jackson asked.

"They couldn't get in a central line and I –well- I couldn't get it in either." She cried.

"He saw it?" Jackson asked.

"He stood right next to me. I'm going to get fired." She leaned against his breast and cried.

"Nobody is getting fired, April. Sanders wants to teach -and the less you know, the more to teach -and you are an amazing trauma surgeon. He'll see that." Jackson petted her hair and tried to cheer her up.  
"Maybe if we were all more willing to give each other a second chance, things would be easier. If I could live through this day again, I wouldn't make this mistake." April said.  
"You don't have to be perfect" he took her chin and lifted it up, he was looking into her eyes "You are perfect by not being perfect."  
"That doesn't make sense." She whispered.  
"It does, you don't need to change. You are caring and kind and compassionate. I don't want that to disappear." He said and let go off her.  
"I haven't screwed up like this since before Iraq." April sighed.  
"Well, we all screw up every once in a while." Jackson nodded.

* * *

"Where are we going?" Meredith wondered when a limousine pulled up in front of Derek's mother's drive way.  
"Oh, I won't tell you." Derek smirked. He was looking at her. She was wearing a floor length gown and she looked lavishing.  
"I deserve to know. I spent the entire day at the hospital listening to people who think you are walking on water. All they ever see is this…" Meredith looked at Derek who was wearing a tuxedo "and what they don't see are all the hair products and all the time you spend in the bathroom."  
"You will like it. -and just for the record- you enjoyed those twenty minutes in the shower as much as I did." He kissed her while the driver opened the door.

Twenty minutes later they pulled up at the harbour. "Oh my God." Meredith looked outside.  
"We are going on a dinner cruise in Brooklyn bay." Derek said.  
"It's beautiful." Meredith looked at an illuminated ferryboat.  
"I thought you'd like it." Derek said "It's even better in the summer when you can sit on the outside, but I thought you'd like it."  
"I might have a think for ferry boats." Meredith said as Derek took her hand.

"I'll have a scotch -and champagne for the lady." Derek said when the waiter arrived at the table "– I cleared it with Patrick. He's perfectly sure it's okay."  
"I don't feel like drinking. San Pellegrino please." Meredith smiled.  
"I still remember the first night I met you. You were the most beautiful thing I ever saw. You still are. I used to go on this trip by myself. Addison – I never felt like I needed her here with me –" he paused and looked into her eyes "with you I just feel like I do. Want you to be here with me."  
"I love you Derek." She smiled.  
"I love you. And you will get back to the OR. Patrick said so."

They talked all the way through dinner. "Lizzie is great with the kids." Meredith said "She braided Zola's hair and Nathaniel and Brendan played with her in the zoo."  
"She's like mom in so many ways. It's almost scary. But, yeah, she's …" Derek paused.  
"Nancy isn't too bad either… once you get to know her." Meredith smiled. The day in Central Park hadn't been as bad as she had expected.  
"You like my family." Derek smiled.  
"They are my family and you like my sister too." Meredith said.  
"So Nancy and you went out for a drink after our fight?" Derek wondered.  
"Nancy had a drink, according to her I was lucky they didn't ask me for ID." Meredith giggled "She gets really chatty."  
"Yeah, and it seems like the tremor is gone once I drank alcohol." Meredith said in a tone that seemed to be light hearted "Maybe I just have to keep drinking."  
"The first time you've been joking since the accident" Derek smiled  
"Oh, I wasn't joking." Meredith laughed "The alcohol helped."

* * *

Next day

Mark was standing at the door when Lexie opened the door "How's my favourite little girl?" he wondered while Maria ran from the kitchen straight to the door.  
"She slept like a baby." Lexie smiled and went upstairs when Amber arrived. Mark followed Lexie's every move until she disappeared.  
"Thank you." Mark said and started counting the money he owed her.  
"My pleasure. How was your date?" Amber asked straight out.  
"I… I don't… I want to settle down, I'm tired of dating and I feel like I already met the right girl, but I don't know who she is." He said and lifted up Maria "I thought your mommy was the one, but I was wrong."  
"If you are ever looking for a sitter again, give me a call. I'm a teenager – I always need money and it was fun." Amber smiled "Thanks for trusting me with her. Lexie said it was a big deal."  
"You talked to Lexie about me?" Mark wondered.  
"No, not really. She was surprised you left your daughter with me." Amber said.  
"Why?" Mark wondered.  
"Because if you haven't noticed it yet, I'm a teenage mess." Amber laughed. "and I have thirty minutes to get ready for school. And you wouldn't want to be late for your first day."  
"You'll be fine." Mark said.  
"You'll be fine too, Dr. Sloan." Amber said and waved Maria goodbye.  
"Tell Karev he can scrub in tomorrow." Mark told her.  
"Sure" Amber nodded.

* * *

Meredith was trying to catch up with Derek who was carrying two bags while walking up the stairs to a hotel. "Derek, you don't have to carry my handbag. I'm more than capable of doing this myself." Meredith smiled and reached out to get her handbag back.  
"Calm down, Dr. Grey." Derek chuckled.  
"You are calling me Dr. Grey now" Meredith laughed.  
"That's your name isn't it?" He asked flirtatiously "I'm here as head of neurosurgery and you are a 4th year resident. We could pretend like we don't know each other."  
"You want us to act all professional, Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith teased him. "I'll remind you how professional I can be when we get home."  
"No, I just wanted to tease you." Derek smirked. "So are you okay?"  
"I'm going to be okay, Derek. I don't really want to go, but I'll be okay." Meredith nodded. "So we better register before anybody recognizes you and we are stuck hearing about how you are God's gift to neurosurgery for an hour."  
"Oh, I like being God's gift to neurosurgery" Derek laughed and ran his fingers through his hair.  
"Do you think the kids are fine?" Meredith wondered while they walked through the room to the registration table.  
"My mom can take care of them. They are fine. They'll love the trip to the statue of liberty. They have a thing for ferryboats." Derek smiled.  
"Oh, I wonder why, Dr. Shepherd."

* * *

"Cristina, you are like Kryptonite." Owen told her in a rather loud voice. He couldn't remember what their fight had initially been about. She had put down some files on the table next to him and they had started fighting, but now ten minutes later people in the hall couldn't ignore their fight anymore and it had turned into a self-destructive battle.  
"And you are superman?" Cristina coughed.  
"I didn't say I was superman." Owen yelled and a few people in the hall turned around while Cristina approached him.  
"If you weren't kryptonite wouldn't hurt you. So you are saying you are superman." Cristina insisted "I'm moving out, we are over. I'll pack up my stuff tomorrow after work"

* * *

When Alex walked into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Amber there making pasta "Alex, I'm sorry for being a pain in the ass." She said.  
"I get it; you don't want to be here." He said "You can go back when you're 18."  
"But I'm and I know you are trying. I know. – and your friends are trying. But it's sort of hard." Amber said.  
"I'll have a beer. Want some pop?" he wondered.  
"Sure." She nodded "It's in the fridge. I bought it."  
"Tomorrow is your first day of school." He tried to make conversation  
"I know."

* * *

Next day

Meredith was sitting at the bar across the street of the hotel Derek was doing his speech at. She had stayed for the first five minutes, but had decided to leave. "Are you here for the conference?" a man in his fifty's wondered and pointed at the name tag she had put face down onto the table.  
"Sort of." Meredith mumbled and looked at the glass of water in front of her.  
"I had to get out of that room too, my head started spinning and I need to calm down. May I?" he asked and pointed to the liquor.  
"No thanks, I'm fine with water." She toasted him "The last time I accepted a drink from a stranger I ended up marrying the guy"  
He laughed and heard her going on about Derek for a while until he collapsed and hit the floor. Meredith's got down and checked his head "Oh my God, Sir. Do you hear me?"  
"Is there a doctor here?" she asked, but nobody reacted "He needs help"  
"What's the matter?" the bar tender wondered.  
"Call 911 and give me that torch, hurry!" she said. She cursed all the doctors across the street who were listening to her husband's speech right now.

"Crap, how far out is the ambulance?" she wondered while she observed him.  
"5 minutes" the bartender told her when she noticed that his pupils had changed.  
"We don't have that kind of time. Give me a drill" Meredith insisted.  
"A drill?" he wondered.  
"Yeah, he has elevated intracranial pressure, I have to relieve it or he'll be a potato before anyone gets here." Meredith said.

Before she got the chance to do anything, the paramedics ran in. "Dr. Meredith Grey. Hello!" she greeted them "The patient is a 52-year-old male with elevated blood pressure and blown pupils. He needs to get to on OR asap. Tell them to prep for a craniotomy and page Dr. Shephered and tell him I went to the hospital."

* * *

All the attendings had gathered in the meeting room. Sanders wanted to find out more about the existing structures at Seattle Grace. "The residents get individual skills lab assignments to complement and enhance their performance in surgeries they've been assigned to." Owen told the attendings when he introduced Seattle Grace's existing teaching concept to the new Chief "That means every resident who acts as lead surgeon has to complete the surgery on a dummy in the week before the surgery."

"That's not enough. The 5th years need to be pushed and the interns need guidance." Sanders said. "The 4th and 5th year residents will be assigned to attendings, the 3rd year residents get a fellow. The interns and 2nd year residents get a 4th or 5th year resident assigned to them and the 3rd years will focus on getting to know all the medical advances. They'll structure their own training class for the medical students coming in during clinicals."

"Those changes need time to be implemented. A buddy system is a good thing if the buddy wants to be one." Owen suggested

"They'll have to. I want to create something great here. This hospital deserves greatness." Sanders said "But people need to realise that it isn't all about them. Surgery is a team sport, training future surgeons is a team sport."

After everyone had left Sanders sank into his chair and wondered "Why do I feel like everybody hates me?"

"You are new. You've been here for a day and changed several protocols. It's not how things have been done around here." Owen suggested.

"This hospital is unprofitable for a reason and the residents have been running around without proper instructions for years. There are no teaching standards." Sanders told him "For years the residents have been running wild."  
"We are a family." Owen said.  
"And that's the problem. Most families are pretty dysfunctional" Sanders suggested.

* * *

Derek ran into the arms of Patrick who had paged him to Meredith's OR "What happened? Somebody told me they brought her to the hospital." He asked.  
"Dr. Shepherd, it's a pleasure to meet you." A nervous resident greeted him when he walked into the gallery.  
"Why don't you see for yourself?" Patrick wondered.  
"Oh my God, that's her." He said. "She came in with the patient? What about the tremor?"  
"The hand looked fine throughout the past 2 hours." The resident said.  
"Hello Winston. Nice to meet you." Derek said after subtly checking the name tag. "I take it you met my wife"  
"Dr. Grey, yeah, she's been pretty impressive." The Chief of surgery got up and greeted him "Haven't seen a finer neurosurgeon at this stage of residency since I trained you"  
"She wants to specialise in general surgery" Derek said. "I didn't get a word there. My department would have loved to have her."  
"Oh, I would have told her that there's a fellowship position waiting for her next year. She didn't freeze, she just did what she had to do to save that man's life." The Chief nodded "I know Patrick operated on her two weeks ago, it's quite impressive"

The surgery was over. "You were great." Derek rushed into the scrub room after Meredith had finished the surgery.  
"I don't even know what I did…" Meredith smiled enthusiastically "one minute I'm at a bar and the next minute I'm performing an emergency craniotomy and…"  
"… you did great. I was your first surgery since the accident." Derek said "I told you; you could do it."  
"It wasn't. I killed a patient when I got back." Meredith said "I wasn't fast enough, not precise enough. Yesterday my hands were shaking when I tried to sew together two oranges -and today was amazing. My hands were still and..."  
"Winston said you did great. He told me they are going to offer you a fellowship position. He was quite impressed by your skills." Derek told her.  
"Don't lie to me, Derek." Meredith smiled.  
"I'm not lying to you and I have another tumour resection scheduled for tomorrow." Derek smirked "Want to scrub in?"  
"There are lots of capable residents here who'd be delighted to assist you." Meredith said modestly.  
"I don't know them. This is a delicate procedure. I need someone I can trust." Derek whispered into her ear.  
"You don't trust me in your OR. You said so yourself." Meredith reminded him.  
"I didn't mean it. I was hurt and mad at you because of the study." Derek said "I was an ass and you chose to work on the trial Bailey is starting. I want you in my OR and I want you in my life."  
"You can't woe me into neuro, Derek" Meredith insisted.  
"I don't want to, but you are going to love this tumour. You have been in a bad accident and I want to help you. Let me help you, Meredith." Derek said "It's a butterfly tumour -and I believe you can do it"

* * *

Owen didn't know where to go. He had finished his shift, but Cristina was at home and he didn't know how to be in the same room with her, so instead he decided to sit down on a bench in the parking lot.  
"What's the matter, Owen?" Amelia wondered when she saw him.  
"I broke up with Cristina." He admitted. Amelia felt slightly guilty.  
"Have you told her about us? I mean, is that why you broke up?" Amelia asked cautiously.  
"I didn't even get the chance to tell her – or I was afraid to tell her." He said "It's like I couldn't get away from her. I don't know how I feel like. I feel like…"  
"an open drain? And you wonder if you'll ever feel like this again, you ask yourself whether it was the right thing to give up on what you had. I get it." Amelia elaborated.  
"I love her – I still do, but she isn't right for me." Owen mumbled "We weren't ever going to work out on a deeper level."  
"It's like being with her is slowly destroying you on the inside -and while you feel high on her ever now and then- it gets more difficult to replicate that feeling and you start to feel low and down more often – and the highs- you are craving for them." Amelia sighed while starring at the car that was parked in front of them.  
"Yeah" he nodded.

* * *

Meredith looked at her cup of coffee. It was their last day in New York, tomorrow they'd return to Seattle. "Meredith, I know I can be…" Lizzie paused and looked at Meredith who was sitting at the kitchen table "and we don't really know each other. But you have been a pain in the ass this week. I know we doctors can be difficult. With our bruised egos and it's hard to tell other people what's wrong with us because usually people just tell us what's wrong with them…"

Meredith interrupted her "Did Derek put you up for this? I'm fine"

"Has he told you that they offered Chief of neuro to him?" Lizzie wondered.

"He has this position at Seattle Grace Mercy West. It wouldn't be an improvement." Meredith insisted.

"Career wise it mightn't be, but you'd be closer to us and how I see it he's afraid to tell you." Lizzie smiled and sat down on the opposite side of the kitchen table.

"We have a life in Seattle -and Amelia is there." Meredith said "The way I see it, he really wants to be there."

"Do you really think it was a coincidence that this guy needed a neuro procedure and you jumped right into doctor mode?" Lizzie wondered "And that the Chief of surgery of Mt. Sinai wants to offer you a neuro fellowship position without even interviewing you… he saw you in the OR."

"Yeah, and he knows my last name. Lizzie, you are a pain in the ass I get that you're are trying to look out for your brother, but he's my husband" Meredith looked at her "What about Lexie? I have family in Seattle."

* * *

Lexie walked into the living room. She looked at Amber who was sitting on a blanket with a toddler and a bunch of toys. "What is Maria doing here?" she wondered when she recognized who she was with.  
"I offered to babysit her tonight. Dr. Sloan is going out on a date and needed someone." Amber looked up.  
"And he asked you?" Lexie wondered.  
"Yes." Amber nodded.  
"You are seventeen." Lexie spat out.  
"I'll go to my room, the porta crib is in there and she might be getting tired soon." Amber said as she sensed some hostility.  
Lexie realised that she had been too harsh "We could be friends… I know you need a friend and I can be…" she stammered.  
"No, you are old and you have your life all figured out" Amber said with a firm voice while picking up Maria from the ground "and I bet you were valedictorian and homecoming queen and I'm not. I don't need charity. I learned to look after myself."  
"Alex is family. So you are family -we might not be related, but you have people here – you might not know it yet and you might not need it – but I love Alex as a friend -and you are his sister. You aren't alone." Lexie said.  
"Are you?" Amber wondered.  
"Alone?"  
"Yeah, it's Friday night and you are here -even though it's your day off." Amber suggested.  
"I'll…" Lexie paused and poured out her key from her purse "I have to go."

When Lexie walked into the bar, she saw Jackson alone at a table. She walked up to him "Hey. How was your day?"  
"Good, what about you?" Jackson wondered.  
"Good. It was a good day." Lexie nodded nervously.  
"That's good." Jackson nodded.  
Lexie looked around "It was nice talking to you, Jackson." She said in an attempt to get away.  
"Don't go. You don't have to go." Jackson said "If you don't want to. I don't mind you being here."  
"Oh, I was only stopping by to see if Alex needs a lift." She lied. She had told Alex that she probably wouldn't make it and the truth was she had hoped to meet Mark.  
"He left early. Something about Amber – He told me to tell you." Jackson said.  
"I could give you a lift." Lexie offered. "I mean; you look like you've been here a while."  
"No thanks, I'm waiting for April. We wanted to talk, but I guess she's stuck in surgery." Jackson said. Lexie nodded. He was waiting for April.  
"Okay, have a good night." She said.  
"Lexie, why don't you sit down and have a drink while I wait for April?" Jackson wondered.  
"You want me to be there while you wait for April?" she asked.  
"Yeah, just keep my company until she shows up." He nodded.  
Lexie looked at him. His piercing greenish blue eyes were looking at her "You're a good person, Jackson. You didn't deserve…"  
"Lexie, I don't want you to apologize. You're a good person that has done something stupid." He said and thought about the second chances April had talked about "So let's just forget about it. Good people are hard to come by, so you have to forgive them."

* * *

There was a knock on the door and the new Chief looked at a black haired man. "Dr. Sanders?" the doctor who had flown in from Baltimore wondered.  
"Dr. Peterson. Thank you for coming." He nodded. He knew that they had tried to hire him at Mass. Gen, but he thought that he would be an excellent candidate for Seattle Grace.  
"Please. You can call me James." James smiled, but as he peaked through the window he suddenly started to stutter "Is it warm in here? Are you warm?"  
"I'm perfectly comfortable. Are you feeling all right?" Dr. Sanders wondered and turned around. Something on the bridge must have set him off, he thought to himself, but didn't quite understand it as there were only a few surgeons discussing their cases or talking to each other on their break.  
"Oh. Yeah, I'm just dealing with a situation." James nodded.  
"I thought I heard a touch of the South in you. Am I right?" the Chief wondered.  
"I grew up in Tennessee. What about you?" James wondered "You aren't from the West."  
"Boston. Born and raised, Harvard Medical school, residency at Mass Gen, but um, all right, look, so, uh, could we cut to the chase?" he paused and went straight to the point of their conversation "I want you for this job, and I suspect you think you don't want this job because you're a John Hopkins hotshot at a level one trauma centre, and Seattle Grace Mercy West is relatively speaking, a sleepy little ER in Seattle but you are young. We only got our level one trauma centre status back very recently, so we need staff. At an established level one trauma centre, you'll be in line behind other John Hopkins hotshots with decades more experience than you. Here- you'd run the department."  
"Seriously?" the young doctor wondered.  
"Not today, not immediately, but eventually. And "eventually" will come much sooner here than…" Dr. Sanders nodded, but was interrupted by James offering him his hand.  
"Oh damn it, okay, I'll start next month" he said.

* * *

 _The ABCs of trauma are a handy tool for keeping a patient alive, but they're only a starting point. Once the patient's airway, breathing, and circulation are all clear and accounted for, the real work begins. The messy work. There's no telling how long it's going to take to clean up that chaos once you've begun, because sometimes, you don't know what you're in for. You don't know exactly what you're about to face. You don't know what secrets the body in front of you holds and whether, by the time it's all over, if there's anything left worth saving._

* * *

The hotel room looked like a complete mess. The travel cot and two diaper bags laid on the ground while Derek tried to squash as many things into the family's suitcases as possible. It was an impossible task after his sisters had taken Meredith on a shopping spree. Meredith who was wrapped in her towel after taking a shower, approached him and sat down on the bed next to the suitcase "You could have told me about their offer." She smiled softly.  
"Why?" Derek wondered. In his mind it had never been an option.  
"Because you are thinking about moving to New York and our lives are in Seattle." Meredith's voice was firmer "How do you think this is going to work? Do you think we can pack everything up and just leave Seattle?"  
"I wasn't. I wasn't even thinking about it." Derek kissed her "I told them that this was not an option -that's why I haven't told you. If I had told you, you would have thought that I only declined because I wanted you to say, oh, you can't pass on an opportunity like that, but our lives are in Seattle."


	51. Chapter 51

Hey everyone, I hope you had a nice weekend.

Following her trip to New York Meredith is going to question a decision she thought she had thought through, George and Callie are going to battle for custody and you will find out more about Lexie, Mark and Jackson. Looking forward to your reviews!

* * *

Chapter 51: Custody Sofia

* * *

 _After a trauma, your body is at its most vulnerable. Response time is critical. So you're suddenly surrounded by people, doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians. Surgery is a team sport. Everyone pushing for the finish line, putting you back together again. But surgery is a trauma in it of itself. And once it's over, the real healing begins. We call it recovery. Recovery is not a team sport. It's a solitary distance run. It's long, it's exhausting. And it's lonely as hell._

* * *

"Wow, this is uncomfortable." Lexie whispered to Jackson.  
"You'll have to rescue me if Yang tries to attack with a scalpel." He laughed.  
"Have they talked at all since the break up?" Mark wondered.  
"You realize that we can hear you, do you?" Cristina looked up from the heart.  
"Yay!" Lexie nodded. "Why do you think she did it?" The patient in front of them had set herself on fire after her ex-boyfriend had started dating something else.  
"She told the EMT she missed him." Mark suggested.  
"Yeah, but just because you miss somebody, doesn't mean that you to go back to them" Amelia suggested. "Because sometimes going back to them can be unhealthy"  
"or what you did with them didn't matter." Lexie sighed.  
"Sometimes, you just have to keep missing them, until you wake up one morning and you realize that you don't anymore. One day you'll have accepted that they are no longer part of your life." Cristina added and looked at Owen.  
"Do you really think so?" Owen wondered at the same time she flat lined.  
"Yeah, gone is gone. Dead is dead." Amelia sighed and handed over the instruments to Lexie.

* * *

 _Today was the day of the custody hearing. Callie and Arizona were standing in front of the mirror in their bed room. It wasn't easy to calm Callie down. "Be respectful and emphasize the fact that you've been the constant caregiver in Sofia's life since you've been able to do so." Arizona smiled in an attempt to boost Callie's confidence in herself.  
"So you want me to be nice?" Callie wondered.  
"Be honest. You weren't able to but now you are." Arizona nodded.  
"Are you sure?" Meredith who was taking care of Sofia for the day wondered.  
"No, see, honest isn't nice. I mean, this is a custody battle. It's not nice." Callie emphasised "But I want what's best for Sofia. Maybe I'm…"  
"You're just nervous." Arizona smiled.  
"No, I'm not, Arizona." Callie looked at the ceiling.  
"You are. It's awful when a judge decides whether you get to keep your child or not." Meredith said "so you are nervous. I mean, you're trying to keep Sofia out of George's hands, And I want to help, but, you know, I work with him, too."  
"So, you know, you got to tell me what you want" Callie looked at Arizona "- Honest or nice?"  
"Be honest" Arizona said unsure whether this was the right decision._

* * *

In the evening Lexie picked up Zola from day care because Meredith had asked her to. "Zola, we are going to visit Maria today. Uncle Mark wants to read "The Jungle Book" to you. It's set in India and there are a lot of animals in the book. Do you know Balu?"  
"He's the bear." Zola nodded.  
"That's right. Do you know the song he's singing?" Lexie looked into her niece's smiling face "My sister, Auntie Molly, and I used to sing it all the time when she was your age. Do you know it?"  
"Forget about you worry and da pasht." Lexie smiled.  
"You know the song" Lexie exclaimed "Who taught you?"  
"Tatcha granda." Zola giggled.  
"That's so sweet. You are a real cutie. But we better get going" Lexie said "You don't want to be late for your little sleepover, do you?"

* * *

 _George was the first person on the stand. His lawyer was walking up and down the room to begin the questioning that they had rehearsed so many times before "please state your name for the record." He asked his client.  
George leaned forward a little and said "George O'Malley"  
"Why are we here today, Dr. O'Malley?" his lawyer proceeded.  
"I'm here for my daughter Sofia. I want custody of her." George smiled and looked at the female judge.  
"Your daughter is almost a year old, yes?" the judge wondered.  
"In two weeks." George nodded "In-in 2 weeks, she'll be 1."  
"So why now?" his lawyer continued.  
"She was born prematurely after her mom was assaulted. I wasn't on the birth certificate and due to the circumstances I didn't get my parental rights instated immediately." George said "She was in the hospital for more than three months and I took care of her after she was discharged because Callie wasn't in any condition to look after her. Until recently I babysat Sofia on a regular basis."_

* * *

"You have to get up" Derek leaned over to Meredith. The sun beams shone through the window.  
"I don't want to. I don't have the hours I need. I need a lot more hours or I won't get to take the board exam with the rest of them. I can't Derek, I have to. I lost so many days, no weeks after the accident, it's crazy." Meredith stood at the breakfast table. It was her first day back at Seattle Grace. "I mean; I don't know why I'm even going back."  
"Callie had to repeat her last year too." Derek reminded her and lifted his body over hers.  
"Callie was in a coma for several weeks – and had a baby" Meredith sighed.  
"It's not about finishing first; it's about making it past the finish line." Derek encouraged her and kissed her passionately "Look at everything you achieved. Look at the kids, the house, the handsome husband."  
"Don't flatter yourself." Meredith smiled.  
"I'm serious. You were involved in three clinical trials, one big research projects, you published several articles, you are very well liked by everyone in the hospital and every hospital in the country would be happy to employ you. You are an amazing mother and you have so much to be proud of. You have so much to look back at and be proud of." Derek smiled. His eyes were sparkling.  
"I won't graduate with my class." Meredith sighed and wound out of his grasp. "There's no way I make up all this time. I haven't been in the hospital as a doctor in weeks."  
"That's not what it's about, Meredith. Just think of Kathie, or the girl with the tumour Avery and you operated on, think of patient #13 on the glioma trial." Derek followed her into the bath room and kissed her while she tried to brush her teeth. "Look into my eyes, they live because of you and that's amazing. Don't let the one patient that didn't make it take that away from you."

* * *

 _Callie was the next one to take the stand. George's lawyer still walked up and down the room which freaked her out "Do you believe That George O'Malley is a fit father?" he asked why walking.  
After she realised that he had just asked a question she looked at the judge for help "please answer the question." The judge said "Is George O'Malley a fit father?"  
"No. I do not believe That George O'Malley is a fit father." Callie said "He cheated on me while we were still married and…"  
"Callie…" George interrupted the judge.  
"Please remain quiet, Dr. O'Malley" the judge asked him "Can you elaborate?"  
"He cheated on me multiple times with his best friend and thereby destroyed my trust, my belief in myself and it took me a while to get over it. I don't believe he can provide a stable environment for my child." Callie said "I only found out that he was the sperm donor when I looked at the profile again. Until the assault I never intended to involve him in her life."_

* * *

Mark and Lexie stood in front of opposite sides of the OR table. It was silent and there was only the two of them "I miss you" she said.  
"I miss you too. Our stupid little conversations mean a lot to me." Mark said. He had enjoyed the previous night "You know we could be together, Lexie. I want to marry you"  
"Don't do that." She interrupted him.  
"Why? Because you'll choose him?" Mark wondered.  
"No, I'll choose me. You want to get married and you…" she paused "I'm not ready for that"  
"I can wait" Mark nodded.

* * *

Meredith and Derek were on the ferry with the kids. This was Meredith's favourite part of the day whenever she got the chance to go in the same time – this time was just for them and the kids.

"Ready to go?" Derek wondered when it was time to get back in the car.

"Yeah, can't wait." Meredith sighed.

"You'll do the great." He said and kissed her forehead.

"The Chief wants to meet me to see whether I'm ready to go back." Meredith said.

"You've been back 10 days after the accident." Derek said "You went back to the OR in New York"

"He wants to talk to me anyway" Meredith rolled her eyes. She had her suspicions about why he wanted to see her, but it was better if Derek wouldn't find out about it straight away.

"He'll talk to me first; I have an appointment at 9.30" Derek smirked. If he had known who was sitting in his office, he wouldn't have smiled, Meredith thought.

"11. You better make sure that you don't piss him off." Meredith teased him. Maybe she would get away without ever telling him.

* * *

 _The questioning continued and Callie got more uncomfortable when George's lawyer started to ask her questions about herself "Are you a reliable person Dr. Torres?"  
"I would say I am." Callie nodded.  
"Did you get married to my client in Vegas?" he asked.  
Callie looked at George in confusion. "Wouldn't that reflect badly on him, too?" she asked him, but he didn't react "But yes, we did get married."  
"Did you or did you not walk alone when you were assaulted while being pregnant with your daughter?" George's lawyer continued.  
"I was alone" Callie said. "But I wonder what you are trying to say here."  
"Do reliable people engage in such behaviour, in your opinion?" he asked.  
"Seriously George, you are playing this game?" Callie spoke directly to George "You want to fight dirty, I can fight dirty too. No, I wouldn't say walking through midtown Seattle on my own is irresponsible"_

* * *

When she came into the hospital Bailey ran to her and hugged her. Meredith froze and still didn't move when Bailey let her go, instead she looked at her in surprise. "Grey, the grant is ours. We got the funding and the FDA approved the next step in our trial. Doctor Webber is going to love this." Bailey said and kissed her cheek "Your mom would love this. It's her research idea. She discussed it with him before she …"  
"… developed the first symptoms. I know. She told me." Meredith nodded  
"Millions of diabetes patients would be thankful and gracious about the time we spent in the lab if this is working." Bailey smiled.  
"I still have a bottle of champagne in the fridge. We should have a toast." Derek offered.  
"No, I'm sorry, I have to pick up Tucker" she said.

* * *

When she came into the locker room Meredith saw Cristina. They hadn't talked since she had went to New York  
"Owen and I broke up." Cristina said when Meredith came in.

"Oh. Why? What happened?" she wondered.  
"We just won't work out. He wants kids and he wants to get married – and he wants to die 110 years old lying in my arms and all of that McDreamy crap." Cristina mumbled.  
"and you don't want that?" Meredith wondered.  
"I'm a surgeon. And I don't feel comfortable being anything else." Cristina said.  
"Owen, has he talked to you about?" Meredith tried to ask her about Amelia.  
"About what?" Cristina wondered.  
"Oh, never mind." Meredith sighed.

* * *

Richard sat in his bed. He hadn't eaten anything as he was having surgery today "Big day today, isn't it?" he asked one of the nurses who brought in breakfast.  
"I'm not supposed to eat" Richard said, but Bailey came in.  
"Richard, there won't be any surgery for you." She sighed "The tumour has metastasised. I'm so sorry."  
"I was so optimistic." Richard looked at his breakfast.  
"I know. We'll figure out a way." Bailey smiled.

* * *

 _George's lawyer was the first one to question Meredith. Her testimony had been scheduled after lunch because Callie wanted to check on Sofia at noon. "Dr. Grey?" George's lawyer looked at her. George had hired Derek's lawyer and Meredith's memory to their fight in his office was still fresh even though it seemed like a lifetime ago "Do you think George O'Malley is a fit father?"  
"I think George is a great father and I think a child should have the opportunity to get to know their father." Meredith said "My mom moved across the country with me and I never saw my dad for 25 years."  
"So you think Dr. O'Malley should get custody?" the lawyer wondered.  
"I think he should get the opportunity to be a part of her life." Meredith said. This was the least partial answer she could have come up with. _

_"You were in an accident too. Did you stop taking care of your children?" he asked.  
"No" Meredith said. "I didn't."  
"No further questions, your honour." He walked back to George's table. "Thank you! We are finished."  
Callie's lawyer was the second one to question Meredith "Ms. Grey, you have a son and adopted a daughter?" she asked.  
"Yes." Meredith nodded.  
"You know both parties from work and you've been fired over an incident that involved a friendly deed for Dr. Torres, correct?" Callie's lawyer wondered.  
"Yes." Nodded. "But they hired me back."  
"One could say that the two of you are friends?" she continued the questioning.  
" Yes." Meredith nodded again.  
"You abducted your son and social services took away your daughter following the incident?" the lawyer asked and Meredith looked at Callie in shock "You were trying to take away your son from his father."  
"This is not how it happened." Meredith insisted.  
"Did you or did you not take your son out of state without his father's approval?" she wondered.  
"I don't think I'm the one on trial here. I only went for two job interviews for two days and one of those nights we were staying at his grandmother's house- his father's mother's house."  
"So you are not denying that this happened without the father's consent and that you took away your child away from their father when it was convenient for you, but now you want to argue that Sofia's father should see her."  
"I… umm… am.." Meredith wanted to scream at that woman.  
"Do you think Callie Torres is a fit mother?" Callie's lawyer wondered.  
"I think both of them are good parents. They try to do what's best for Sofia." Meredith said.  
"So you think that despite my client's previous condition she's a good mom?" the lawyer wondered.  
After the question the lawyer had asked her about Boston and New York, Meredith wanted to deny it, but she felt like she had to do what was best for Sofia "I believe she did everything she could."_

* * *

"Good to see you Derek." Meredith smiled when she met Derek in Dr. Sander's office.

"Oh, it's a good day." He smiled at her and his eyes were shining.

"Derek? Formality seems to be unknown in this hospital." Matthew Sanders noted "Is this how you address all of your residents, Dr. Shepherd? Meredith?"

"My wife is free to call me by my first name, Dr. Sanders." Derek smiled. "And you just called her Meredith"

"I never realized you were…" Sanders paused and looked at Meredith.

"Married?" she wondered. It had been a lifetime since she had seen him.

"You two know each other?" Derek wondered. He thought that they might have met while Meredith had been in Boston, but quickly learned that this wasn't the case.

"He was my mom's resident." Meredith clarified "-Among other things."

"You slept with him?" Derek knew the expression on her face when she wanted to talk about something uncomfortable "Look at me and tell me you didn't sleep with him."

"I… no… well… It's a long story…" she finally managed to say.

"That ended with the two of you wrapped in sheets. I'm not leaving you with him." Derek insisted.

"Jealous? Dr. Shepherd I can assure you that I respect the sanctity of the holy matrimony." Dr. Sanders tried to persuade him.

"It's fine Derek." Meredith nodded.

* * *

Her lawyer continued the questioning " _Dr. Torres, if you win, if partial custody is granted to you, what do you look forward to with Sofia? What are you looking forward to?"  
"I" Callie paused and chuckled "I can't wait to watch her sleep again. After she was born, uh, when Meredith brought me to see her, she was tiny almost fragile back then, b-before I gave her to George, I used to watch her sleep, and she just she looked so peaceful. And, uh Well, now she's trying to walk and form words and, um and I want to be a part of all that. I don't want to I don't want to miss anything else. I didn't have a normal pregnancy, I had wounds that needed to heal after the assault. Big wounds."  
"Do you want to take a minute Get some water?" her lawyer wondered.  
"No, I'm okay" Callie cried._

* * *

"Married? I never pegged you to be the marrying kind" Matthew got down on the chair that used to be Derek's.

"I'm not peggable." Meredith said defensively

"You haven't changed." He noted "You are still a force of nature."

"I changed. What do you want?" Meredith cut straight to the case.

"I wanted to see you. You can give me a tour through the hospital. For old times sake." He suggested

"You've been here for a week, I'm sure you know your way around by now." Meredith brushed him off.

"So Dr. Shepherd, how long have the two of you been married?" he wondered.

"Intern year, two kids." Meredith smiled.

"Wow." He nodded.

"You wanted to talk to me about getting back into the OR or was that false pretence?" Meredith wondered.

"I talked to a few people. Hunt will clear you for surgery -and you are on his service until you declare a specialty." Sanders said.

"I'm not considering trauma." Meredith insisted -and after knowing about him and Amy he wasn't her favourite person either.

"You are now. Plus, someone told me that you almost specialized in neuro, so your undying love for general surgery can't be this strong." Sanders insisted "Legend is you have a neuro fellowship position waiting for you at Mt. Sinai."

"Technically that's true, but I'm not going to take it." Meredith smiled "I'm going to walk away. I can't be in the same OR with Derek …"

"Lovers quarrel?" Sanders wondered.

"No cocky neurosurgical ignorance." Meredith giggled.

"He's not the only neurosurgeon in this hospital." He suggested "I will give you some time to think about it. Dr. Springer recommended you."

"You must be glad that my mom's dead." Meredith said out of the blue.

"Why?"

"Because she threatened to cut your balls off if she ever found us in the same room again. I'm in the ER if you need me" Meredith said and left the office.

* * *

"I ordered brochures." Alex said "Really good, but not too competitive programmes."  
"Alex, I thought we talked about it." Amber said and looked up at him.  
"Yeah, and I'm responsible for you" Alex said "so this isn't up for discussion. Are we clear?"  
"Yup, you know you used to be cool." Amber laughed and shook her head while looking at her breakfast cereal.  
"I don't care what you think about me, this is the right thing to do and you will thank me later."  
"Yeah, I bet. You can't force me to write that essay you know." Amber said.  
"I lied on that essay, told them about working in a hospital in Africa. Well, it would be true now, so why don't you write about the person you want to be." Alex suggested.  
"That might work – if you know who you want to be." Amber looked at Alex.  
"you had a 3.9 GPA in Iowa. That's hardly something you do if you don't know who you want to be." Alex insisted.  
"You wouldn't understand." Amber sighed.  
"Why?" Alex wondered.  
"I did this for dad, I thought he'd show up for graduation if I'm valedictorian and … that's what I wanted to do." She admitted "I need him to know that I'm good enough to be cared about."  
"Amber, if you think he left because you are not good enough, that's bullshit." Alex yelled "He's a loser and he left because we are better off without him."  
"You knew him I wasn't old enough to remember." Amber said.  
"and you are better off that way" Alex said and stormed out of the kitchen.

* * *

 _April and Jackson sat at a table on the far end of the bar "He looks upset. I'm going to go and check on him now." April said.  
"No, leave him alone. He got beat up in court today, April." Jackson said "Custody battles are ugly.  
"Hey, can I get you some food? Or a martini?" Joe wondered.  
" You don't give someone liquor who's clearly upset about—" George blurted out.  
"Liquor is exactly what you offer someone—" Alex smiled and looked at George „I'll have a double scotch."  
"I'm fine. I'm fine. I'll be fine. I just need to, um Hey, uh, this is the third message" George looked at his phone. Anna was trying to get in touch with him.  
"I'm leaving." Alex said.  
"Please come back. I need, uh I need someone who's on my side." George said.  
"You donated sperm, dude." Alex said. "That doesn't make you her dad"_

* * *

Before Meredith got a chance to meet Owen in the OR, she ran into Cristina. "Oh my God, I was in surgery with Owen and that God, I wasn't alone. Shepherd's little sister has been there." She said "I usually don't like her, but this time it was like she was in-between."  
"I wouldn't be so sure about that. She can be pretty annoying. She's messy." Meredith said  
"You are messy." Cristina reminded her "and she's alright"

* * *

Meredith approached Owen who was the runner up in the contest for least favourite person to work with today. Cristina and Owen had broken up and after all, she had to pick sides.

"Meredith, it's good to see you." Owen greeted her enthusiastically.

"What do you want me to do?" Meredith wondered.

"Your intern is waiting for you at the bay. Take care of her. Bailey took care of her the last few days and praised you for your teaching skills. Cristina wasn't nearly as good according to her." Owen told her and pointed to a young girl who was waiting at the door.

"You don't have to be nice, Owen." Meredith said in a matter of fact tone "And yeah, Cristina sucks at teaching interns."

"Meredith, I'm not being nice. If you go into the OR today, I won't be there. I'll probably be in surgery myself. They'll send someone if you page them, but you are responsible for your outcomes." Owen insisted "I can give you the speech I gave Kepner last week. From this point it's your patient and your outcome. If you screw up, you screw up and the patient might die."

"You don't have to give me the speech. I know that, Owen. I'm responsible for my patients and my interns and if they fail it's my fault." Meredith said "The tutoring system at has been the same."

"It's good to have you back, Grey." Owen repeated.

"No!" Meredith yelled "You break up with her and you don't tell her?"  
"It doesn't matter now, she broke up with me, anyway."  
"Hold on, she broke up with you?"  
"She hasn't told you?" "I thought she did"  
"She didn't. She just said that she didn't want kids or marriage."  
"That's what she said" "Ugh, that's rich"

"You didn't talk about it?"  
"You are talking to me"  
"I wouldn't. But I care about her and if that means I have to talk to you, I'll do it."

* * *

 _"So when Callie found out she was pregnant, you moved in with her?"  
"No, she refused to talk to me before the assault." Arizona nodded. "But I would have, if she had let me. It's easy to be a good friend to Callie. She's a good friend of mine.  
"Dr. Robins, Isn't it true that you and Dr. Torres are in a lesbian sexual relationship and split up recently because you didn't want to have a child and decided that you wanted to work at a clinic in Africa? Isn't it true that you left while she was already pregnant?"  
Arizona looked at Callie "Do I-do we-is this— "  
"Ms. B, unless you can get there real fast" the judge looked at George's lawyer.  
"Different area, then. You got married. Do you know why Dr. Torres would have picked her ex-husband's sperm at the sperm bank?" he asked.  
"I don't. She didn't talk to me about it because she underwent IVF before we started seeing each other. She wanted to be a mom. It sort of happened at the same time." Arizona said and Callie nodded.  
"So even though you two are living together she has not discussed this decision with you and turned to my client for help after the assault. He's been involved in the child's care for an extensive period of time Are you confident to judge a person's character based on the fact that you have been sleeping with her for a few months?"  
"objection. Argumentative." Callie's lawyer insisted.  
"Sustained." The judge nodded.  
"If Sofia was your patient and not the child of your lover, would you think that shared custody would be in her best interest? Given everything she's been through; do you really think Callie Torres is a fit mother?" George lawyer asked.  
"I think Callie is a fit mother and this really shouldn't be up for discussion here. She's a wonderful mother. I'm just saying that maybe the two of you should talk, George. You know, there's a way to be decent about this."_

* * *

When she approached the intern the girl smiled and handed over a chart. "You're patient is back"  
"Hello, Ms Johnson. It's nice to see you again. This is Dr." "Come on, tell them your name"  
"Hillman, I'm Dr. Hillman"  
"She'll take you for a CT after she familiarized herself with your history."  
"The patient presented herself with a slight fever and abdominal pain. You removed her appendix about three months ago."  
"All right, get back to me once you know more"

* * *

Derek walked up to Cristina who was peacefully eating her lunch all by herself.

"What's the story between Mer and Sanders? The whole story." Derek wondered when he sat down right next to her.

"I don't know." Cristina said truthfully.

"That's surprising." Derek noted.

"It's the truth." Cristina sighed "How was New York?"

"Has she told you about the emergency craniotomy?" Derek wondered.

"Yes. I think everybody in this hospital knows by now." Cristina sighed. It was heart in the elevator all over again.

"I think she's herself again." Derek smiled.

"She better is; I need someone around who is able to stand up to Sanders. Why did you step down again?" Cristina wondered.

"Because I value my marriage more than being Chief." Derek said.

"Yeah right. I'll go and check on my intern." Cristina rolled her eyes and got up.

* * *

 _"Do you have any e-mails from George where he mentions Sofia?" her lawyer wondered.  
"We work in the same hospital We don't e-mail" Callie insisted.  
"I'm just asking." She nodded and made a note.  
"Well, I'm just telling you. What do you want me to do, lose this thing?" the lawyer wondered "Do you want me to- to hand over my kid to him every second weekend or for half of every week?"  
"Shared custody is not the worst thing—" Arizona looked at both of them.  
"No. Arizona- No!" Callie started to cry "I can't lose her again."  
"Okay, shh, shh. Okay, shh. Shh. It's okay. Here. Okay, here. It's okay. Shh, shh, shh." Arizona cradled her in her arms "Give her to me. I'm sorry. Oh, sweetie, it's okay. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry."_

* * *

Bailey walked into the room where Meredith and her intern were waiting. "What's the matter Grey, can't you handle a little appendectomy follow up on your own?" she wondered before she looked at the scan.  
"There's free fluid – it looks like a perforation of the bowel" the intern pointed out.  
"We didn't go near her bowel, but there's a hernia" Bailey noticed.  
"Yeah, that's why I paged you"  
"Hillman, can you hit the book and research options?" Meredith told her intern "You'll scrub in with Dr. Bailey if you find a solution"  
"No! No! No! You can watch!" Bailey insisted "Meredith, I want you to assist"  
"Why?" Meredith wondered.  
"Why?" Bailey asked her "Because you are a 4th year resident and I trust you in my OR. We'll probably have to resect larger part of her larger and small intestine, so I want you in that OR with me."  
"I don't want bile all over me" Meredith smirked "Hillman, you wouldn't want to make that mistake."  
"What are you doing?" Bailey wondered when she looked at the intern who was typing something into her phone.  
"Researching" she smiled "They suggest a resection of the larger intestine and an artificial anus while the colon is sewn together, they suggest several weeks of in hospital supervision and after six months the large and small intestine is reconnected."  
"Sounds interesting, forward the article to me"

* * *

 _"Hey." Carlos stood at Callie's door.  
"Thank you so much for coming." Callie smiled.  
"Oh, god. I wouldn't have missed this for the world. Oh, I'm just so sorry. I'm so sorry That you have to go through all this." He hugged her "And, uh, I hope this isn't my fault. When you were gone and you couldn't be there for Sofia I I encouraged George to be there. We're going to fight this. We're going to fight, and you're going to get your daughter."  
"Okay." She smiled and hugged him.._

* * *

The next morning was George's first day back at work after Sofia's birthday party. He walked into the locker room while everyone was looking at him. He walked pass Alex, Cristina and Lexie and pretended he didn't know them. They had sided with Callie, but in the end, it didn't matter. "Look at him" Alex whispered.  
"He didn't even say hi" Lexie nodded.  
"I wonder what else he would have…" Cristina paused when Meredith came in.  
"Shut up, all of you! George, George look at me! I'm not mad at you." She said "If you want to talk, you can"  
"I don't want to talk to you!" George yelled. "You insisted on inviting Callie to that party."  
"We don't want to talk to you" Alex said  
"All I'm saying is, if you are ready I'll still be there. We are friends." Meredith said "Friends don't go away that easily, but Callie is our friend too."

* * *

Mark walked into the living room in the afternoon. "What are you doing?" he wondered when he looked at a bin full off paper balls.  
"Alex wants me to apply for college." Amber rolled her eyes.  
"You sound like that's a bad thing." Mark chuckled "Thanks for taking her again."  
"It isn't, but I have to write this essay and I don't have a clue what I'm going to write about." Amber admitted.  
"I lied on that essay." Mark laughed.  
"I don't want to do that…" Amber sighed.  
"I was a manwhore… before Addison… before Lexie… I was a manwhore."  
"This is your fourth date this week. You realize you left Maria with me or Lexie four times this week?" Amber wondered.  
"She isn't ready. But I want her to be ready – and until she is-I want her to be involved in Maria's life." He admitted "And it doesn't hurt that everyone thinks I'm on a date while I watch football in my apartment."  
"So you are doing this for her?" Amber smiled.  
"You know I'm going to marry that girl and you are.. "  
"going to write that essay." Amber nodded.  
"Good girl."

* * *

Meredith rolled her eyes. Derek had turned into a green-eyed monster. "You slept with him? Jesus, I want to get him fired."  
"This happened years ago. I was barely legal." Meredith insisted.  
"See I'd be calm if this happened to me." Amelia smiled and left the kitchen "I'll get the kids now and you'll shut up about it."  
"Where have you been?" Derek wondered.  
"the hospital. I was on call. And you are not my dad." Amelia looked tired.  
"You are not doing…"  
Amelia interrupted him "drugs? No, Derek. I'm not doing drugs. I'm young, I'm single. I have every right to do what I want when I want to… so please, leave me alone."

* * *

Anna had been waiting for Callie for quite some time, but her boyfriend's ex wife walked right past her. "Callie"  
"Go away, You won. He gets to see her!" Callie yelled.  
"I didn't come here because of that. Arizona said that you still have nightmares. I just wanted to let you know that I get it." Anna said "You are damaged, you almost died, you experienced a huge trauma and it's hard to accept that you are happy again, that you are capable of being happy after everything that happened."  
"I love Sofia. I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for her and"  
"when she smiles your heart warms up and you are happy" Anna nodded "but a second later you remind yourself that whatever happened, happened. But that feeling fades over time."  
"She's pretty." Callie smiled.  
"She is – and George loves her." Anna said "He wouldn't hurt her – and you love her – and this love for her is what is going to get you through this."  
"It's natural?" Callie asked  
"yeah!" Anna nodded.

* * *

 _Callie's lawyer walked up and down the room while George was on the stand. She had questioned him about the first year of Sofia's life when she started to come back to something he had said earlier "when you say "abandonment"-  
George interrupted her "That's what it was. Callie abandoned our child".  
"That's a strong word, "abandonment. " Another strong word is "hate." Have you ever hated anyone, dr.O'Malley?" she wondered.  
"Not that I know of." He said. He didn't even hate Callie.  
"You were married, correct?" she asked like she knew the answer, like everyone in the room knew the answer  
"Yes" George nodded.  
"What happened?" she wondered.  
George cleared his throat and stuttered "I… she… we… it just didn't work out."  
"Did you try to have a baby?" she wondered.  
"Yes. She wanted to have a child. She really wanted to have a child. A child was all she could think about. And she really wanted to be a mom." George said "We thought we could fix our relationship when it was really just a band-aid." _

* * *

Meredith walked into one of the prep rooms and found in there."You paged" she smiled.  
"Yeah, I want to talk about this tumor with you." He said and pointed at the scan in front of him. "I think I can get it out."  
"It's Richard's." Meredith looked at it.  
"You haven't been on the case. How do you know?" he wondered.  
!I'm Richard's medical proxy in case he can't make any decisions on his own. It's in section 4 of the file." Meredith smiled.  
"Oh, I haven't looked at that…" he admitted.  
"He's the reason mom left Seattle."  
"He's your father?" Sanders asked confused. Meredith realized that he had only ever heard that side of the story.  
"No, Christ no." she giggled until she saw a few white knots "There are metastasises."  
"Yeah, that's why we can't go in the way the oncologist originally planned to" Sanders said "I'm conducting a trial that uses a less invasive approach. He'd need chemo afterwards, but he'd have a chance."  
"Well, you might want to talk to him about it." Meredith suggested.  
"I wanted to ask you to scrub in." He said "I haven't seen you in the OR yet."

* * *

"My brother, Alex" Amber wrote those three words for the twelveth time and ripped out the next sheet from her notebook "No, this sucks"

"You're hard on paper" a boy laughed.  
"I'm trying to write an essay for my college application and I hate every single line I write. I'm Amber by the way" she looked up at the good looking boy.  
"I know -you are in AP maths with me, and AP biology and AP Literature." He smiled.  
"Yeah, that's right. I knew I've seen you before." She smiled.  
"Ethan by the way" He sat down next to her  
"I know, Mr. Henderson kicked you out because you were 5 minutes late." She teased him.  
"Oh, very observant." He smiled.  
"Not so much, turns out I don't really know what to say." She said. "I thought this would be easier."  
"If you are interested we could meet for a coffee and I could help you." He said.  
"You don't know anything about me."  
"We could change it – and it took me about a thousand tries until I had finished my college essays." He winked.

* * *

Meredith and Derek fought in their bedroom "You slept with your boss." Derek yelled.  
Meredith rolled her eyes. "You are still jealous." She noted.  
"You spend the entire day with him." Derek insisted while he looked at the painting they had put up above the bed.  
"We were figuring out a way to cure Richard and just for the record he wasn't my boss and just a friendly reminder I sleep with my boss." Meredith stood her point "You are my boss. If you are referring to Sanders. Well, I did sleep with him like twenty years ago. It's ancient history. I was young, gullible and stupid."  
"So he took advantage of you." Derek insisted  
"No, well, I wanted to be taken advantage of." Meredith whispered angrily "Are you jealous? You don't have to be jealous."  
"I'm not jealous. I'm just worried." Derek tried to persuade her.  
"Why would you be worried?" Meredith wondered.  
"It feels like he has an agenda."  
"To make this hospital the nr. one at the West coast." Meredith nodded "Give him a chance."  
"No, with you, Mer." Derek insisted.  
"He's always been a little creepy if that's what you've been worried about. I can handle it." Meredith nodded.  
"It's just… I have a feeling…"  
"Wait until it passes…"

* * *

 _Callie and Arizona were talking in the kitchen. "What if I lose?" Callie wondered.  
"We're not going to lose. We…" Arizona started but Callie interrupted her and repeated her question "What if I lose?"  
"we. We." Arizona yelled.  
"fine, what if we lose? What if we lose?" Callie asked and looked at Arizona.  
"It's not losing anyway, alright? George is Sofia's father. It's not like he's going to hurt him. It's not like I said he was going to drown her in the bathtub." Arizona insisted "She'll be fine whatever happens."  
"You know what? It's past her bedtime. She should've been asleep, like, a half-hour ago. I'm going to put her down, okay?" Callie insisted and Arizona handed Sofia over to her. The door bell rang. "It's just-we don't need her, this. We don't need this. Can you, uh, get the door, please?"  
"Yeah"Arizona nodded while Callie took Sofia to her room "Alright. Ready? Say good night. Good night. Say night-night. Night, big girl."  
"Night-night, mommy" Sofia waved to Arizona. _

_When Arizona opened the door she saw George "I went to the hospital first, but you weren't there. So I figured, I mean, Arizona's, it- I mean, I know it's late and my lawyer would" he cleared his throat "be upset if he knew that I was here, but- what? H-how did we get here, Arizona? I mean, here, in court."  
"You sued her" Arizona said "You sued her for custody.".  
"I know that, but isn't Isn't there a more civil way of doing this?" he wondered "Your lawyer knows all these personal things about everyone".  
"So does yours" Arizona reminded him.  
"Well, that's why I'm asking, how did we get here? You put Sofia in my arms and made me solely responsible for her well-being. I have to do what I think is right for her." George insisted.  
"Really?" Arizona rolled her eyes  
"Look, clearly, you hate me" George said when Callie came back from Sofia's room. .  
"George Leave me alone" Callie insisted and disappeared again..  
"Hey, hey, come on. Come here."George yelled.  
"Hey, what the hell was that? What? Fellas, keep it together" Arizona insisted.  
"No, screw that. Do you have any idea what you just did? You don't understand. I- you want to fight dirty? Let's fight dirty" Callie yelled at George..  
"But you started it." George chuckled "Remember that when you're on the stand."_

* * *

"Maggie Pierce."  
"Dr. Miranda Bailey – Seattle Grace Mercy West"  
"I'm not interested in job offers." The voice on the other end of the line said.  
"I'm not going to offer you a job, I'm going to offer you an opportunity." Bailey sighed.  
"What is this about?" Maggie asked.  
"Your father." Bailey closed her eyes and prayed for a moment  
"The man who provided some genetic material" Maggie corrected her statement. "My father is the man who adopted and raised me."  
"Fine, but the man who provided some genetic material would like to meet you. He's a good man."  
"He got my sister fired."

* * *

"You are on trauma now?" Derek wondered "This is the 7th time I see you in that gown today."  
"No, Sanders wants me to figure out what specialty I want to do" Meredith rolled her eyes.  
"I thought you were keen General." Derek wondered.  
"I am keen on General, I mean Bailey and I have the trial." Meredith smiled and turned around.  
"Have you ever thought that it might be destiny?" Derek wondered. "That patient in New York was ..."  
"I know Derek and I know what you are trying to tell me." Meredith said. It was precisely what had kept her up at night.  
"We could combine work and date night." Derek smirked.  
"Am I wrong if I think you bring this up because you don't want me to be around Matthew?" Meredith wondered.  
"Yeah, Dr. Sanders, I really want you to be around the guy who took your virginity." Derek spat out.  
"Ugh, he didn't. If that's what you are worried about, you can stop being jealous." Meredith sighed "I love you."

* * *

 _George said outside the court room and looked at Lexie. "Who knew? Who knew that everyone thought I was such a horrible person? What'll happen if I lose?" George sighed "I really love her  
"What would you tell a patient If she were going through this?"Lexie wondered  
"I don't know" George said.  
"Come on. You do" Lexie insisted.  
"Don't give up, not yet. There's still a chance. You have a whole live ahead of you." George said.  
Lexie nodded. "Okay, let's go back." she insisted. _

* * *

Anna and George were laying in bed together. They were both reading, but the silence was suffocating both of them "George, what's the matter?" Anna wondered.  
"Callie talked to me again. She said you talked to her." George spat out  
"Well, you didn't really talk to each other on your daughter's birthday party, someone had to do it." Anna insisted. She was expecting to hear him give out to her, but that wasn't the case.  
"Thanks!" he said gratefully.  
"So it was okay that I meddled? Because the last time I meddled freaked you out." Anna said.  
"Thanks" George said "Sometimes I just need a little push."

* * *

 _"So, next question, Dr. Torres?" George's lawyer wondered. "Are you still in love with him?"  
"I'm sorry everything that's happening has hurt you. But I can't let you hurt Sofia the way you hurt me. I have to protect her." Callie looked at George.  
"You-you didn't answer the question." His lawyer insisted.  
"What do you expect me? No. I-I mean, we made a baby together – in a petri dish- and I'm going to be forever grateful that he provided his sperm." Callie said "I mean, the least we could offer each other is honesty. Honest? Fine. I'm done. I have moved on. I'm over you. I wish you well. Best of luck in all your future endeavors. And you make it seem like I walked away from our child. I love Sofia and I let you take care of her when I wasn't able to. I have moved on. I don't love you." _

_"Do you believe That Callie Torres is a fit mother, Mr. Torres?" Callie's lawyer asked him.  
"Answer the question, Mr. Torres" the judge insisted.  
Carlos looked at Callie and let out a sigh. He cleared her throat. "No, I I should've… I should've told you how I was feeling. I didn't because I wanted to be there for you. I was going to be there for you, and I got up there and I realized that this is about Sofia. But I shoulda talked to you first. I'm sorry." Carlos started to cry "I think my former son in law deserves to be in his daughter's life. I think my daughter is a wonderful mother, but I also think my granddaughter should have two parents in her life. I'm old fashioned"_

 _Meredith sat by Callie's side. The judge had paused the questioning after Callie had started to cry. Meredith handed her a tissue "All right, I'm going to give you five minutes. You've got five minutes to sulk about what everybody said about you in there." She smiled and tried to dry Callie's tears "You got five minutes to cry and scream and to call them every single bad name in the book." Meredith paused "Then when those five minutes are up, you're going to walk back into that courtroom and you're going to fight for your daughter".  
"I can't. I can't." Callie cried.  
"I'm sorry, but the clock's ticking." Meredith said.  
"Damn it, Grey." Arizona said.  
Callie looked at Arizona "You know, maybe she's better off without me, okay? Maybe I am a terrible mother."  
"Well, that does not mean that you quit. Yes, there will be times when you let your child down." Arizona said.  
"There will be times when you do the wrong thing." Meredith said "There will be times when you are a horrible mother. But that does not mean that you quit."  
"It means that you fight harder. So go back in there and fight. Fight for the both of us." Arizona hugged Callie "I love you and I always love you, but you have to go back in there to fight for your daughter."  
"You haven't been strong enough to take care of her after the assault, but you gave her to George. You gave her to someone who would take care of her. You did what any mother would have. You chose Sofia when you gave her to George. Do you hear me?" Arizona started to cry when she looked into her wife's eyes "You chose her". _

* * *

"Ugh, I hate your brother." Meredith sat down in the prep room.  
"Why?" Amy wondered and turned around after looking at a few scans.  
"He suggested that it might be my destiny to be a neurosurgeon" Meredith rolled her eyes while pulling out scans from a chart she had brought.  
"Derek believes in destiny and soul mates." Amelia said "He still believes in people"  
"So you think we are meant to be?" Meredith wondered.  
"You and him and you are neuro." Amelia said in a tone that made Meredith question whether she was joking or not "I honestly don't understand why you would want to do anything else."  
"You are a neurosurgeon, so you might be biased." Meredith looked at Amy.  
"But the Derek being God's gift to neurosurgery is just as bad for me as it is for you – and I figured that I might as well just ignore it. Even though the trial isn't going well." Amelia sighed.  
"What's happening? Meredith wondered. She sensed that there was something wrong.  
"I can't really talk about it" Amelia said. She would have loved to talk about it, but the new department policies dictated that trials were limited to the residents that decided to specialise in that particular specialty.  
"Unless I'm on the trial." Meredith suggested.  
"Yeah, and as you want to be a general surgeon, there's really no way that's going to happen." Amelia insisted. "and you wouldn't even think about it, if you wouldn't have thought that he was half right."

* * *

 _"Please answer the question, Dr. Robbins. Have you considered asking Dr. Torres to abort Sofia?" George's lawyer asked her. She had asked Callie once. It was true.  
"I-I hadn't planned on becoming a mother, So, yes, I considered it" she stuttered "but then I changed"  
"So did you have any doubts about being a mother before the assault?" the lawyer wondered.  
"Every woman has doubts about becoming a mother" Arizona nodded.  
"Answer the question" the lawyer insisted.  
"Yes, I had normal amount of uncertainty about becoming a mother." Arizona nodded.  
"You left Dr. Torres shortly after finding out she was pregnant." The lawyer continued.  
"I had a once in a lifetime career opportunity." Arizona nodded "I was fighting for my own happiness and we had just started to date recently when Callie decided to do IVF. So I couldn't quite focus on who the father was or if I wanted to become a mother."  
"We all understand the amount of stress that you were under, but in that situation, in any situation, don't you think putting your own needs first Is the antithesis of being a good mother?" he asked  
"I've spent a lot of time thinking like that, Mr. Booker, but I am a great mother and Sofia is a great girl."._

* * *

Meredith and Dr. Bailey were standing in fron of the table. Meredith looked at her intern who was standing a little behind her "Hillman, please present the case!"  
"CT showed signs of heteroptic mesenteric ossification. The exact etiology of HMO remains unknown..." she paused "It is hypothesized to result from the dislocation of small osseous fragments from the xiphoid or os pubis as well as from osteogenic differentiation of local mesenchymal progenitor cells, intestinal continuity is going to be reconstructed after complete removal of the enormous dendritic intraabdominal bone formation."  
"Thanks" Bailey said "Let's begin."

"You haven't lost your touch." Bailey smiled when she looked at Meredith  
"Oh, yeah, thank you" Meredith looked at her.  
"What's the matter?" Bailey wondered. She knew that Meredith didn't like compliments, but this time she seemed particularly uncomfortable.  
"New York." Meredith sighed "I know this sounds stupid, but I'm still thinking about that patient and I wonder if it was a sign from the universe."  
"The universe tried to tell you to get back into the OR?" Bailey wondered.  
"No, that's not what I mean. He could have had anything, but he needed a craniotomy and I'm good at neuro, I was on two big trials and I got an offer for a fellowship position before I even chose a specialty." She admitted.  
"So you think that was a sign?" Bailey asked again.  
"What do you think?" Meredith wondered.  
"I think it's whatever you want it to be" Bailey said "You are a good general surgeon and I'd be sorry if you chose another specialty."  
"Thank you." Meredith nodded.  
"Dr. Grey, it's the daycare, Zola developed a fever" the nurse said.  
"Can you take over for me?" she looked at her intern and Dr. Bailey.  
"Sure." Dr. Bailey nodded.

* * *

 _"You were fantastic on the stand today. If that doesn't win it for us, I don't know." Callie complimented Arizona after she returned from Sofia's room.  
"Is the baby asleep?" Arizona wanted to know.  
"What?" Calle wondered.  
"Is Sofia asleep?" Arizona wondered.  
"Yeah, she went down fine." Callie exhaled deeply.  
"How did your lawyer know about Meredith's miscarriage? Answer me." Arizona asked.  
"I had to do something to help us win." Callie mumbled.  
"I don't even know what to say to you. Wh- Callie, I don't know. It's like you-you have done some horrible things during this trial, but I told myself It's because, you know, you're worried and you're scared. But now-now it's like you've shut down Callie and become this cold, hard, mean-" Arizona ranted, but Callie interrupted her "you know what? Mind your own business."  
"Mind my own business?" Arizona coughed.  
"Yeah, stay outta this. This is my business." Callie yelled.  
"You made it my business when you put your daughter in my arms. If I didn't love that kid, I'd sit back and I'd watch you and George let tear each other to shreds. But I do love her, and that is who I am concerned about her" Arizona yelled back.  
"And I'm not?" Callie asked.  
"You better think about what you're going to say to her when she asks you one day, "why did you do this to my father?" And what are you going to say?" Arizona asked "I hope you're going to have something good to say, Callie, or else otherwise, she's going to—"  
"what, what, she's going to hate me?" Callie wondered.  
"No, she is going to be ashamed of you, like I am right now." Arizona said "Those things you let them say about him, I wouldn't have ever done that."_

* * *

The gallery was packed as everyone wanted to see Dr. Catherine Avery in action. Callie was assisting on the orthopaedic aspects of the procedure which certainly was a huge priviledge. "Dr. Torres, it's the daycare." A nurse noted when her pager went off."They want you to pick up Sofia. There has been an incident"  
"An incident, what is that supposed to mean?" Catherine Avery wondered.  
"I don't know, but she's in the ER now."  
"I have to go" Callie said "Jackson, make sure that screw is secured tightly"

Cristina coughed "I can't believe she did that, 'there's nothing more important than a surgery like this"  
"there is, family" Owen said and looked at her. "This sort of thing, it's what you do for family"  
"In that case surgery is mine." Cristina said "I will never have kids. There's no person on this planet I'd give something like that up for."  
"Maybe you are going to change your mind. I had this patient today…"  
"I won't change my mind, Owen. I will never change my mind about this." Cristina interrupted him "Anyone can fall in love and be blindly happy, raise a kid, not everyone can pick up a scalpel and save a life. That's what I'm meant to do. I'm meant to stand in the OR. Don't wait for me to change my mind."  
"I see" Owen nodded. Everyone in the room was looking at them. Owen looked to the ceiling and left.

* * *

 _The last statements were the last part of the trial. Callie looked around "and when I wasn't ready, I gave her to the one person I knew would put Sofia's life before his own." She paused and sighed, looked down to her paper, swallowed and continued "and that was George. And my friends stepped in and helped. And they are protective of Sofia. And as hard as it is to hear their concern for me, I'm glad that they're protective. And I am not going to apologize or be made to feel bad for doing what was best for my child and for me."  
George looked at Callie and interrupted her "I am here today because I want to be a part of my daughter's life. And I want to share custody of my daughter. I am ready to share in the burden of parenting, and I deserve the chance, because I did the work, because I got better" his voice broke and he started to cry "and because I am Sofia's father. And no one else can say that._

 _The judge looked at Callie "Last question, Dr. Torres. Given everything that's been said, given your personal experience, Would you say that George O'Malley is a fit father? Dr. Torres?"  
"May I please I'd like to say something" said without answering the question.  
"Of course" the judge nodded.  
"She's just like you, you know that? She's stubborn already and sensitive. She observes people, laughs all the time, for no reason whatsoever. She's just like you." Callie said and started to cry "She may have my eyes, but she's so much like you- and I want her to know you, George, I do. It's just, she doesn't know pain yet. And I know it's coming one day. It's inevitable- she'll get her heart broken. Like you broke mine. But I want to hold that off as long as I possibly can. And I think that if you're ready to be part of Sofia's life I know what you're like when you love someone. I know what that feels like" her voice broke and she looked at George who was also crying "and it's the one of the best feelings in the world. -and I want Sofia to know that love, because you're her father and I think we have a chance to raise the happiest, most loved little girl in the world. But please, George, be ready, be ready to be there for her. That's all I ask."_

* * *

Jackson walked into the scrub room to find Lexie. His mother had surprisingly shown up and this mixed up his whole life as he had lied to her the past couple of weeks to avoid what had happened now. He hated when she tried to meddle. "Lexie, can you do me a favour? A huge favour." He said.  
Lexie noted the expression of concern on his face "What's the matter?" she wondered.  
"My mom is here and I haven't told her about the break up -and if I tell her now, she won't leave town for a week – and I can't stand her for a week." He admitted "So can you act like you don't hate me?"  
"I don't hate you." Lexie said."But yeah, I'll be the best play pretend girlfriend you ever had."  
He whispered "Thanks, 8.30pm in the hall, wear something nice"

* * *

When Alex came home, there was nobody in the living room, but he heard that Amber was upstairs. "What are you doing?" he asked after he had opened the door and found her pillow fighting to Avenge Sevenfold's 'Afterlife'.  
"I thought I was clear! Nobody upstairs!" he yelled and looked at the boy by her side. They had worked on her essay for several hours and Ethan had presented all his methods to relax and get a clear head.  
"Ethan tried to help me!" Amber said while she stood on the bed.  
"and I'm sure he did in so many ways nobody else could" Alex mumbled.  
"Is that your dad?" Ethan wondered.  
"No, My brother." Amber's eyes wondered from Ethan to Alex who was extending his hands to her "I hate you Alex." Amber jumped down the bed and grabbed a coat again.  
"What are you doing?" Alex wondered as Amber took Ethan's hand.  
"We are leaving." She said.  
"If I ever see you in this house, I'm going to kick your ass." Alex yelled.  
"Alex, shut up! I didn't ask you to do this! I came here and tried to make friends and all you do is make things hard." Amber said before they made their way down the stairs.

* * *

 _It was time for the judge to make a ruling "Dr. Torres, you suffered a great tragedy, and I sympathize with everything you've been through. I commend you for going to therapy and getting yourself ready to have a relationship with your child and get back to being able to do your job. I acknowledge the fact that this takes time away from your child. The fact that you are back at work, It's a testament to your strength." Callie smiled and thought that she had won. He was praising her qualities and her accomplishments, but then his tone changed.  
"Dr. Torres, over the course of this trial, many people who know you best and care for you most expressed that they don't believe you're ready to take care of your child on your own right now." The judge pointed out. It was right both April and Jackson, Lexie and Mark had said that they thought she couldn't do it on her own – even Arizona had hinted at it. "And as much as I appreciate how far you've come and the intensity of your desire to be with Sofia, I cannot simply substitute my judgment for theirs. Mr O'Malley, while it has been agreed in a preconception written agreement that you'd be the sperm donor, based on the post-birth behavior it can be argued that you became something more. Therefor I grant shared custody to Dr. Torres and Dr. O'Malley. You are both free to file a petition To revisit this arrangement in the future." _

_Twenty minutes later after everyone had left, Callie was sitting on a bench in front of the court room. People were passing by, but she hardly noticed them. "He has custody, I can't believe he has custody. And all our friends said he's a good dad. He's not her dad, he was the sperm donor. Our lawyer said he had no rights and now he gets to see her half the time."  
"Callie, he took care of her for almost a year while you couldn't." Arizona said "and you still have her – she's still our little girl."  
"Do you want to hold this against me now?" Callie looked at Arizona with tears in her eyes.  
"No, I'm trying to tell you that there is a reason you asked George to take care of her. You wanted to him to take care of her…" Arizona paused and looked at Sofia and Callie "See this is a huge step. You are holding her, we sit on a bench together and you are in the same room. You can be with Sofia. You don't run away, it's great, it's what we've been working for for months. And Sofia has three kickass parents -who has this?"  
"She really does" Callie nodded. _

* * *

Meredith came into the locker room. Her sister was getting ready to go out "Lexie, you need to tell me what's happening on Derek's and Amelia's trial." She insisted  
"I can't do that." Lexie told her while she tried to apply some lipstick.  
"I want to know" Meredith insisted.  
"Well, talk to Derek, talk to Amelia, Come back to neuro." Lexie said "I have to go now."  
"I don't know what I want. I want to do both." Meredith sighed.  
"Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too." Lexie took her purse and went past Meredith  
"So you think I should go back to neuro?" Meredith asked by the time Lexie had almost reached the door.  
"I think you keep yourself from going back to neuro because of him, I mean you went to Boston and worked on a neuro trial with one of the most prestigious neurosurgeons" Lexie said "Maybe you shouldn't."  
"Yeah, because I had slept with the head of general surgery and didn't want to be that kind of person again." Meredith rolled her eyes.  
"I have to go." Lexie said  
"Lex, what ever you are doing, you look good." Meredith smiled.

* * *

April and Mark looked down to the entrance where they saw Jackson's mother, Jackson and Lexie. "What are Grey and Avery doing there?" Mark wondered. He saw Lexie with Jackson and it hurt.  
"Having dinner with his mother." April said.  
"I didn't realise…" Mark paused. All this time he had pretended to move on, he had overlooked the fact that she indeed had moved on.  
"He should have asked me… I should be there…" April said "Catherine love me… We are friends on facebook."  
"I can't believe she took him back." April spat out  
"I can't believe he's looking at her like that again." Mark said. Jackson looked at her the way he looked at her -in total awe.  
"I have to get going." April said.  
"Yeah, me too." He said while watching Lexie walk awy.

* * *

 _"I have Sofia for her birthday. Do you know how to plan a birthday?" George asked while Meredith looked at him slightly confused, but he continued anyway. "Because I don't. I think I'm going to take her to meet mom, that'd be a nice birthday gift, wouldn't it? I can invite you and the kids, Anna, Sophie, my brothers, Cristina, Jackson, April and Alex and we can have the party at my mom's house."  
"And Callie and Arizona." Meredith added trying to remain calm.  
"No, they won't be there. They didn't want me to have her at all, they don't get to be at my birthday party." George said "They kept her from me at Christmas"  
"It's Sofia's birthday party. It's Sofia's birthday party. This party sets the tone for every interaction you three have afterwards." Meredith bursted out "If you treat them with kindness, they are going to treat you with kindness. If you are on a warpath, Sofia will grow up thinking her parents hate each other."  
"I hate her, right now I hate her. She made my friends hate me, she made me hate me" George said "I dug up all that dirt and she dug up all that dirt and she started using it, she doesn't get to see Sofia on her birthday."  
"and you did the same. It was despicable." Meredith nodded "What both of you did was despicable. Arizona's abortion? April being a virgin? You fought dirty, too. You fought dirty, too and both of you destroyed so much between you, but you have Sofia. It's hard to rebuild a relationship from here and you shouldn't make it any harder on Callie than it needs to be. This past year she has been to hell and back, don't make this any harder on her. Don't make this harder on all of you. If you want to regain some of the respect you lost during that trial, you invite her"  
"You are right." George said "So how do I do this?"  
"You invite a few kids and their parents from daycare, you invite your family and you invite Callie and her family, you rent a few tables in the park, you buy decorations, you buy cupcakes and soda and you tell yourself that you are not doing this for yourself, you are doing this for Sofia." Meredith said "Neutral grounds"_

* * *

Meredith looked at Derek. He hadn't apologized since their fight and they both knew she was expecting an apology. "He's good, Sanders is a good Chief." Derek said when Meredith's piercing look followed him from the entrance to the kitchen  
Meredith nodded "So, what I said about giving second chances and looking at things from a different angle…"  
"It helped, yeah." He said "I'm sorry."  
"I called Maggie." Meredith said. It had been a short conversation  
"So what I said about you and Thatcher and how it applies to her and…"  
"yeah" Meredith interrupted him. That's what she had told Maggie.  
"What did she say?" Derek wondered.  
"That it wasn't my place to tell her anything. I'm not her sister – we might share the same DNA, but we are not related and she doesn't want me to call her again." Meredith sighed. She knew that Maggie was right about a few things, but she wished that she would have listened to her.  
"You seem okay." Derek noted.  
"It's her decision. There's nothing I can do if I wanted to. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about the way people feel. They are entitled to their feelings." Meredith bid her lips.  
"I could…" Derek said, but Meredith interrupted him because she knew what he wanted to offer.  
"No you can't!" she insisted. "She doesn't want complicated. If she comes around, I hope Richard will still be there.  
"Zola needs more black people in her life" Derek smirked "-we are running out of ways to braid her hair."  
"Bailey called you out on that, didn't she?" Meredith smiled "I thought you braided your sisters' hair."  
"I might have lied about that."

* * *

It had been a long day and Alex was surprised to find Amber at the kitchen table after she hadn't been home the previous night.  
"Are you okay?" Alex wondered when looked at her. Five books and two folders were spread around the table.  
"I guess it's okay, I'm trying to fit in." Amber said.  
"You can talk to me, you know." Alex offered "If I'm pushing you, that's because I want you to be okay."  
"I'm fine, Alexander." Amber smiled. She knew he hated that name.  
"Don't call me Alexander." He rolled his eyes and went to the fridge.  
"Mom calls you Alexander." Amber looked up from her book.  
"She'd be proud. You are graduating – and going to college" Alex winked.  
"and you'll be a kickass surgeon." Amber smiled.  
"I have to go back to the hospital. Sanders wants me to take care of some of the new interns." Alex said "and I have to get the training certification to do the classroom trainings"  
"The five years you'll spend here as a..." Amber mocked Richard Webber whom she had never met.  
"Christ, you know the speech." Alex laughed.  
"Lexie told me about it. Go! I'll be fine.

* * *

 _The length of your recovery is determined by extent of your injury. And it's not always successful. No matter how hard we work at it. Some wounds might never fully heal. You might have to adjust to a whole new way of living. Things may have changed too radically to ever go back to what they were. You might not even recognize yourself. It's like you haven't recovered, anything at all. You're a whole new person, with a whole new life._

* * *

After dinner Jackson drove Lexie home and walked her to the door while his mother was waiting in the car. She smiled and waved at them while Lexie looked for her keys in her bag. "My mother is still watching" Jackson pointed out after Lexie had unlocked the door.  
"I know." She said and hugged him "Maybe we should kiss. I mean, we have to sell it."  
"Only if you want to." Jackson said and looked into her eyes.  
"Sure." Lexie said. "I mean, if she leaves, we can stop doing this."  
"Okay, I'll move to you" Jackson said.  
"and we will kiss." Lexie whispered seconds before their lips touched. After a few seconds Jackson let go and kept looking at her.  
"Thanks. I'll see you." He said. While he walked back to the car they never stopped looking at each other.


	52. Chapter 52

Sorry for the delay, but I have a tenosynovitis so it's kind of hard to type stuff. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter anyway.

* * *

Chapter 52

 _People are really romantic about the beginnings of things. Fresh start, clean slate, a world of possibility. But no matter what new adventure you're embarking on, you're still you. You bring you into every new beginning in your life. So how different can it possibly be?_

Meredith walked into the Chief's office. "Meredith" Dr. Sanders greeted her.  
"Dr. Grey" Meredith corrected him "Dr. Sanders."  
"You wanted to talk to me." Sanders turned around in his spinning chair.  
"I did. I was wondering whether there is a way to specialise in both general and neuro." She smiled. Throughout the past week she had realized that she wanted both. "I mean, I putting in all those extra hours and…"  
"Meredith, I'll look into it, I'll figure something out" he nodded.  
"Derek, Dr. Shepherd can't find out" Meredith insisted.  
"How are you planning to specialise without the head of the department knowing about it?" Sanders laughed.  
"I don't know; you are the Chief of surgery. Figure something out!" Meredith told him. Sanders nodded and looked at her.

"I'll perform the surgery on Richard today" Sanders said.  
"Who's assisting?" Meredith wondered. She had not seen the procedure on the OR board.  
"Your intern."  
"She wouldn't know her hand from her ass." Meredith rolled her eyes.  
"Well, she'll have to learn. She's in the skills lab. I showed her the procedure once and now she's practicing." He said "I won't let her near Richard in the OR though, she's in there to observe- before she doesn't have the necessary certification she can't assist on a laparoscopic procedure – you know that."  
"Alright." Meredith nodded and walked away.

* * *

Cristina was doing some charting at the nurse's station when Owen ran into her "Cristina." He noted when they crashed. She had not been sleeping since the breakup, in fact she had not left the hospital. Those walls felt safe.  
"I can't apologize Owen; I won't apologize for how I feel." She spat out. "I can't control how I feel. The sun doesn't apologize for being the sun and rain doesn't apologize for falling. Feelings just are. I can't change who I am. The person you want me to be, is not me"  
Owen nodded and looked at her "I was going to ask you for Ms. Hovers chart."  
"Oh." She looked at him and nodded.  
"You can pick up your stuff tonight." He offered.  
"It's Zola's birthday party tonight." Cristina said. She had not planned to go, but maybe it would be a nice distraction or the proper excuse why she couldn't make it to their apartment.  
"I didn't know." Owen said. Amelia had in fact not told him.  
"I'll try to make it anyway." Cristina nodded. "It's a kid's party, probably won't be long."

* * *

Meredith walked Richard to the OR. "Alright, Richard, you go in there and kick cancer's ass. I'll give you her number and you can call her. How about that for motivation?" she smiled  
"We have to go now." Dr. Hillman said softly. "Dr. Grey, you know how things are going."  
"I'll wait here. I'll watch from the gallery." Meredith said "I'll try to be there when you wake up."  
"No, you won't. Family doesn't get to be in the gallery." Dr. Sanders said. "Rules are rules."  
"Wow." Meredith sighed as the doors to the surgical unit opened.

* * *

Mark saw Callie on the bridge that connects both surgical areas: "How are you? I mean with Sofia and everything." He wondered. He knew how hard it could be to be separated from your child.  
"I'm okay. I'm getting used to working out time schedules with George." She nodded, but seemed absent. When she noticed that Mark was still looking at her, she sighed "It's…different."  
"You know I'm always there in case you need to talk -and I know all about the lawyers and the resentment and… the accident…" Mark smiled "I'm always up for a drink if you need one."  
"Thanks. But right now, I have to figure out how to live like this. I'm still trying. I'm still going to physical therapy every second day. I'm training my hands and I try to learn how to take care of Sofia." Callie listed what she was doing every day "Arizona, she helps me, but right now we don't get a whole lot of time to ourselves."  
"Yeah, I was exhausted all the time after Maria was born and I …" he paused.  
"Thanks, but I'm only trying. How are you?" Callie asked.  
"I'm trying… Lexie. I can't get her out of my head." He sighed.  
"Get her." Callie smiled "If I learned anything… it's that you shouldn't hold yourself back"  
"So if you are up for a drink, just call me. I'll be there" Mark nodded and walked away.

* * *

Lexie and Jackson waved Jackson's mother goodbye. Seattle-Tacoma airport was busy and everybody at the airport. As his mother waved them one last time before making her way through security, Jackson looked at Lexie "She left, she finally left. Thanks Lexie. Thank you for everything, you can stop pretending now."  
"Yeah." Lexie nodded. She had almost forgotten that she was only his pretend girlfriend.  
"But it was fun, I forgot how much fun we had together." He smiled.  
"Yeah, it felt pretty good. Even though the fake almost proposal on the space needle was a bit too much." She giggled and looked at him with sad eyes.  
"It could have been real. You have to admit that it would have been pretty romantic if you would have proposed to the person you loved." She nodded.  
"What if I do?" he wondered. Lexie went silent and looked at him.  
"Hold on, are you trying to say that you still love me?" she wondered as she didn't know what to say.  
"We have to get back to the hospital." He said without answering her question.

* * *

While Richard was in surgery Meredith had been paged to the laboratory that had been set aside for the islet cell trial. Derek was waiting in front of the lab with the kids and smiled at her "The kids wanted to see you."  
"Go away, I want to set up the lab properly." Bailey told him.  
Derek whispered "I guess we have to go" into Meredith's ear while her intern looked at her.  
"A research project is a brilliant idea. This idea is like a baby in a mother's womb. It grows and gets bigger while the mother provides everything for it to flourish." Bailey made an introduction "Let's see what's behind this door."

"Mice? Really?" Meredith looked at the room full of cages.  
"You are going to insert two hundred devices into these two hundred mice. We are monitoring another group next door. They don't have the device." Bailey nodded.  
"Two hundred? I'm going to be stuck here all week." Meredith noted.  
"Great practice though." Miranda Bailey smiled "These mice are tiny and you can vastly improve your technique."  
"Am I supposed to place the device at the same position for all of them?" Meredith wondered.  
"Why are you asking?" Bailey wondered.  
"Well, maybe the location affects the effectiveness." Meredith's intern suggested.  
"Try it." Bailey said.  
"Half and half?" Meredith wondered.  
"Works fine for me. We'll take turns once we get to the stage where we gather and interpret the data." Bailey said "I'm scheduled for a liposuction."  
"Who's cleaning their cages?" the intern wondered.  
"You are. I'm not cleaning their cages. I'm an attending." Bailey said.  
The intern looked helplessly at Meredith. "Hillman, you are on the trial now, clean the cages." Meredith smiled "Congratulations."

* * *

George unlocked the door and looked at his girlfriend "Anna? Can I come in?"  
"Why wouldn't you? You live here too" Anna noted.  
"We had a fight." George said and waited at the door.  
"That doesn't mean that you're not allowed in your own house." Anna came up to him and took his jacket and his keys.  
"It's your house. You paid for it" George said.  
"I asked you to move in -and you did. That makes it your house -and I don't…." she paused  
"Sophie couldn't have a better role model. I'm just telling you, I want kids someday. We would have amazing kids." George said without realising that he had brought up the original topic of their fight again.  
"George, I don't think I can do it. Sophie is amazing but I don't think I could do it on my own again."  
"You wouldn't go through it alone." George said "I mean…"  
"You don't know this." Anna said "You don't know if you'll be there."  
"You don't want another child?" he wondered.  
"George, I'm not saying I don't want kids at some point in the future but I can't guarantee that I'm going to change my mind. If you stay around, you have to know that there's a possibility we won't have kids -and my mom died, why do you have to push something like this now?" she wondered.  
"Is it because you'll always be in love with your dead fiancé?" George asked  
"I'll always be in love with the father of my daughter." She said and grabbed her coat.

* * *

"I told her to page an attending" Cristina cried in Dr. Sanders office. "And she said "Dr. Singer, do you see an attending?" I wanted to call someone!" In the meantime Cristina sat next to her and rolled her eyes.  
"You performed a procedure you are not qualified to do. "Dr. Sanders said "How many procedures outside of cardio have you done in the past three months?"  
He knew the answer. Cristina hadn't been assigned to a patient outside of cardio in two weeks and she had assisted on four general procedures in the past three months. "She survived, I couldn't have been so bad" Cristina shrugged.  
"You should have paged an attending…" he yelled "This isn't the first time you violated our new teaching protocols, Dr. Yang"  
"Dr. Hunt was the only one available and you wouldn't want me and him in the same OR" she challenged him.  
"I want an attending and a resident in the same OR -and I don't care about your personal problems." He insisted "I can't do my job if everybody here keeps doing what they want. You will be banned from any surgical procedure for four weeks, Dr. Yang and dr. Singer, I'm going to assign you to Dr. Kepner until Dr. Yang is reinstated.".

* * *

Amy and Derek stood in the operating theatre together. The tumour in front of them needed more than one skilled surgeon. "So who is this mystery man you are meeting every night?" Derek smirked when they waited for the radioactive seeds to do their work.  
"I don't know what you are talking about." Amelia smiled and looked away.  
"Staying out late, smiling, I know that face." Derek laughed "Your sisters do it too. Same face, same laugh"  
"Well, I have a thousand things to say to him and a thousand reasons not to, I can't tell you whom it is." She smiled. "It's just sex anyway."  
"So I it's someone I know." Derek concluded.  
"I'm not telling you anything, you will tell mom and she'll be over before you know it." Amelia smirked. "I heard Meredith wants to go back to neuro." -at least Dr. Sanders had talked to her about it.  
"I didn't -and I'd be the first to know, wouldn't I?" Derek looked at Amelia.  
"Yeah, I guess." Amelia nodded.

* * *

"How is he?" Bailey wondered when she saw Meredith in front of Richard's room in the intensive care unit of the hospital.  
"He hasn't woken up yet." Meredith bit her lips "But they got it all out."  
"Thanks" she nodded.  
"You don't have to thank me. We don't know if it worked yet. Can I talk to you about Dr. Yang?" Bailey wondered. "Dr. Sanders asked me to."  
"No." Meredith declined. "He can ask me himself, if he wants me to say anything which I won't."  
"Well, you could become Chief resident." Bailey suggested.  
"I won't if it means that I have to betray my friends." Meredith smiled softly.

* * *

Lexie stood in the locker room when Jackson walked in. He sat down on the bench in front of his locker and let out a sigh. "You look like shit and you said things and now you're not talking to me…" Lexie rambled "and it's driving me insane because you said that you still love me or at least you made it sound like it and…"  
He looked at her "You look beautiful." She had tied her hair to a 1920s style updo and was wearing a green dress.  
"I'm going to Christopher's birthday party. You can come if you want" she suggested "If you give me an answer"  
"I don't know Lexie. Being with you felt good." He said "but I don't know if I'm in love with you"  
"What do you want me to do?" Lexie wondered.  
"Just do what makes you happy." He said.  
"So do you want to come? There's cake and … yeah… beer… there'll be beer."

* * *

"You must be Anna, George talks about you a lot" April greeted the brown haired woman that came into the kitchen with her daughter and George.  
"And you must be April. I didn't realise all of you would be there." Anna smiled "Sophie, why don't you go and play with some of the kids outside?"  
"She looks like you." April noted with a smile.  
"Do you have kids?" Anna looked around.  
"No, but I want some, once I got married. A boy and two girls. The boy will be called Samuel. It's a biblical name." April rambled.  
"That's nice, I guess." Anna smiled "So your boyfriend…"  
"I don't have a girlfriend" April admitted.  
"Nobody would want her. She's annoying" Cristina walked up to them and grabbed a beer from the bridge.  
"Hey Cristina." Anna greeted Cristina, but looked at her phone "Oh, I'm sorry, I have to go, the hospital is calling."  
"Isn't that supposed to be our line?" April loved  
"Yeah" Cristina nodded and walked away.

* * *

When most of the kids at the party had left or went to bed, the adults finally had a chance to focus on themselves. "Whoever invented the term happily ever after should have his ass kicked." Meredith mumbled.  
"You are cherophobic…" Lexie laughed.  
"Cherophobic?" Cristina wondered.  
"Everything is well and you're just afraid something horrible is going to happen" Meredith explained. Lexie and she had discussed that concept a while ago.  
"Like your boyfriend proposing after we decided to pretend to be a couple after I cheated?" Lexie wondered.  
"No like Derek wrapping himself around a telephone pole or I don't know. The world is a horrible place." Meredith said "I have this dream and he keeps dying and there's nothing I can do"  
"Owen is seeing someone." Cristina said out of blue.  
Both sisters turned their heads. "He told you?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, I found a pair of panties when I cleaned out my stuff." Cristina said "So now I have a bunch of stuff in my car and a pair of panties."  
"Wow" Lexie laughed, but was interrupted by a noise in the living room. "I have to go" she excused herself after she saw that Jackson and Mark were at the centre of attention.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Amelia wondered. She had snuck to Zola's room to check if her niece was sound asleep.  
"I wanted to talk to you" he said "Cristina cleared out our apartment."  
"In the middle of my niece's birthday party" Amelia suggested that this wasn't the right place or time to discuss whatever what was going on between them "Are you insane? What happened can never happen again!"  
"Why not?" he wondered.  
"Because it's messy and I don't need a man right now." Amelia insisted.  
"But I need you, Amelia" Owen took her hand and put it on his chest. She was able to feel his beating heart. "I'm crazy about you"  
She moved towards him and started to kiss him. The kissing lead to touching, she slowly unbuttoned her shirt while he took off his shirt. "We should move" Owen suggested while he opened his belt.  
"No, somebody will hear us" she whispered and continued to kiss him.

* * *

Five minutes later Meredith noticed weird sounds over the baby monitor and decided to check with Cristina. "What's going on here?" she asked when she saw Owen and Amelia. "Amy, what are you doing in my daughter's bed room?"  
The door swung opened and revealed the scene to Cristina "Owen, seriously?" Cristina starred at him.  
"Oh my God!" Amelia whispered and tried to cover up her naked body.

Cristina had fled the scene; Meredith had followed Cristina onto the porch.  
"I can't believe you kept this from me. You knew" Cristina yelled at her, but both didn't notice that they had an audience.  
"I thought it happened once, Cristina. I wasn't aware…" Meredith tried to defend herself.  
"When was the first time?" Cristina wondered.  
"The first time I noticed?" Meredith sighed "Christmas"  
"They've been doing this behind my back and you fail to mention it once in months!" Cristina started to walk to her car.  
"It wasn't my story to tell." Meredith got in between her friend and the car.  
"Friends tell each other if their partner is cheating on them, Mer." Cristina said and moved her eyes in a way that tried to suggest for her to move away.  
"I told Owen to tell you and she wants kids. She wants what he wants" Meredith insisted.  
"Are you saying this is my fault?" Cristina coughed. She couldn't believe the day she had.  
"I'm saying that, I don't know what I'm saying. Amy… she's my sister in law. She isn't a bad person." Meredith insisted.  
"Is this supposed to console me? My boyfriend cheated on me, but at least the girl isn't a bad person." Cristina opened the door of her car.  
"No, but you and Owen. You fight. You don't want the same things Cristina and it's, it's not going to change." Meredith insisted "You are having problems and there's no fix to one person wanting a baby and the other not wanting a baby. Maybe you are not meant to be, you want different things and it's what keeps you apart."  
"You believe in all this meant to be bullshit? I love him, Meredith. Do you know what it feels like to walk into your ex-boyfriend kissing another woman?" she wondered "No, you don't. It's embarrassing. I love him, Mer. Don't you dare talking to me like this."  
"Cristina, just let me explain. Please!" Meredith begged.  
"Explain, Christmas, that's when you should have explained this. That's when you should have explained."  
"I'm not the person that cheated on you" Meredith reminded her.  
"You are the person who should have told me that I get cheated on." Cristina said and started the car "You should have been my friend. You should have had my back."

* * *

After all the mess everyone had left the party quickly. Mark had punched Jackson after a few drinks and the fight between Cristina and Meredith had been less than private. Lexie and Jackson looked at each other. "You know, she's gone. We don't have to pretend anymore." He said after she had handed him a cooling pack.  
"What if I want to pretend?" Lexie smiled.  
"Lexie, your ex punched me, I think it's safer for me to stop pretending." Jackson looked at her.  
"No, no, shut up, you wanted me to do this" she insisted "and I did it and now I see the way you look at me and I know that you want to kiss me too."

* * *

When Owen saw Amelia the next morning he was relieved that she had found the strength to come to work after half their colleagues had seen them naked. "Amelia" he yelled.  
"Don't talk to me Owen." Amelia walked past him.  
"Cristina saw us." Owen followed her, but whenever he caught up, she walked faster.  
"I happen to remember. My brother and my sister in law saw me naked and your ex or girlfriend or whatever yelled at me. So please, stop talking to me because you'll run back to her anyway." Amelia stopped and screamed at him "I worked very hard on not being broken and you are not a good person. You used me to hurt her. – and you wanted to hurt her because she had the audacity to want different things than you do. You are a horrible person – so please leave me alone. I have to go."

* * *

Derek and Mark sat in the day-care. Mark was holding a cooling pack. "What's the matter?" Derek wondered when he saw Mark's black eye.  
"She keeps pushing me away." He sighed. He looked like a love sick puppy.  
"We don't get to choose who we fall for. They may mistreat us, ignore us or hurt us but we stay with them." Derek nodded.  
"Is that why you asked Meredith for a divorce after she was fired?" Mark wondered "I mean, clearly this isn't healthy, I never felt like this for anyone before."  
"I stayed and not because we're stupid or we enjoy getting hurt, it's because we can see the good in them." Derek said "You tried with Addison and Meredith and me - despite all the arguments, she makes me feel like nobody else can."  
"And she can value that feeling and because our brains won't allow them to leave our minds. I keep thinking about her, but she keeps saying no" Mark threw a ball back to Christopher.  
"You never took no for an answer" Derek noted "When did that start?"

* * *

"You are my neuro consult?" Dr. James Peterson looked at Meredith. He had paged Dr. Shepherd, but apparently she had delegated this consult to one of the residents. He was the new ER doctor all interns were going crazy over, but for some reason the attendings didn't like him. Meredith didn't quite get it. He was about her age she thought.  
"Yeah, I guess I'm all you'll get." She joked and looked at Samantha Parker's chart. Amelia had released her before, but she was back and her FSH levels were elevated while the LH was lowered permanently. "Looking at the chart there's a chance there's a tumour at the pituitary gland, I'll take her for a head CT" she concluded as the pharmaceutical treatment hadn't changed the levels.  
"Oh, that's more than Dr. Shepherd did last time she has been here." He nodded.

* * *

Meredith was able to locate a tumour at the pituitary gland which meant she had to page a neuro surgeon. She was rolling a dice here, it was either Amelia, Derek, Dr. Nelson or the guy who had just moved here from Boise.  
"Amelia, good to see you, want to have a drink?" Dr. Peterson smirked.  
"It's Dr. Shepherd." She insisted.  
"I beg your pardon" he looked at her.  
"I never allowed you to use my first name in here." Amelia looked at him. "What are you doing here?"  
"I'm working here" he smiled and Meredith didn't quite know what to make of that scene "I used your first name plenty of times before. So what about that drink?"  
"What's happening here?" Dr. Hillman whispered.  
"I don't know." Meredith said.  
"I'm Dr. Shepherd for you." Amelia insisted and looked at the tumour "So tell me, what are you two doing here?"  
"They know each other" Meredith whispered.  
"I heard you, you talked to your brother about me. I'm flattered…" James said. At least Derek had been quite unwelcoming.  
"Shut up, see… I get it… you see me and you see you and you think we worked out great in Baltimore. You think we're about the same age and this could be fun, but I'm about a hundred years older than I look." Amelia insisted "I left for a reason No, I don't want that drink. But you can book that OR."  
"Okay" he nodded "but if you feel up to it, I'm at Sam's in the bay. They have excellent fries and I know how much you like fries and I'm there on Thursday nights and you could be there too if you feel like you want to talk".

* * *

After getting kicked off her case by Amelia, Meredith had to work in the ER on her own. While it had been a lazy day for two hours, suddenly everybody was alert when two victims with gunshot wounds came in. One head wound and the other one with trauma to the abdomen and leg. Derek and Owen were on high alert.

When the first patient came in Meredith jumped to the ambulance "I thought you wanted to go into general" Derek smirked.  
"Yeah, but the patient is here nonetheless." Meredith said hoping she'd scrub in.  
"Grey, come over!" Owen yelled when the second ambulance arrived before she had a chance to persuade her husband.

* * *

Mark looked beaten up even though he had been the one that had punched Jackson and Lexie wanted to cheer him up while they were trying to graft bones. "Atychiphobia, Mark." She said  
"What?" He wondered.  
"You suffer from it." She smiled.  
"What is it?" he wondered.  
"The fear of not being good enough." She answered "You are. You don't have to punch out my boyfriend at my sister's party."  
"I was a moron"  
"No, you're not a moron, just a case of arrested development" Lexie laughed.  
"So you thought about it?" Mark wondered.  
"No, Mark, but I kept thinking about you and about Jackson." She sighed. "You punched him"  
"You went to Zola's birthday party with him."  
"I think we can be happy" Lexie said "Jackson and I can be happy. You should move on"  
"We have a shot here, Lex. Right now, we have a chance and I need you to take it."  
"Mark, Jackson is a good guy." Lexie looked into his eyes. She didn't know what was going on inside their heads. She wanted to kiss him, but less than two hours ago she had felt the same thing for Jackson.  
"You don't have to settle for a good guy" Mark said "You should settle for your one true love".  
"I don't want to hurt him again." She apologized "and we… you wanted to get away from yourself, so you moved to L.A. with Addison, but you realized that you can't run from yourself by moving from one place to another and now you are back here and you think you know what you want, but you don't."  
"I'm in love with you Lexie, I'll always be in love with you." He sighed as he put the instruments down.

* * *

Derek was the last one to finish his surgery. Meredith and Owen sat in front of the scrub room.  
"I saved him" Derek smiled.  
"He's the shooter" Meredith told him "You just saved the guy that shot Owen's and my patient"  
"Did he make it?" Derek wondered even though he knew the answer.  
"No, there was an aneurysm, it burst and he herniated." Owen said  
"I tried to relieve the pressure, but…" Meredith paused when she noticed that technically Derek couldn't find out about that part of the procedure.  
"we couldn't stop it." Owen finished "And now I have to talk to his wife and his two kids."  
"The police are waiting for my guy." Derek sighed when he looked at his pager.

* * *

Anna sat on her bed with a box of tissues spread around her. She was crying and it looked like she had cried for quite some time. She had left Sophie at Meredith's place and she had been alone all day. "What's the matter?" George wondered. He knew that Sophie was at the hospital day-care and wondered why.  
"Mom died. Well, on the bright side it wasn't the cancer that killed her, it was an allergic reaction to one of the pills she was taking to deal with the side effects." She laughed hysterically before starting to cry again. By now she was all dried up.  
"I sat by her bed for two hours before you came." George said.  
"Why do these things keep happening?" Anna cried "Why is the universe so screwed up? My mom's dead, my dad died, Daniel died and everyone I know keeps suffering, my mom had a miscarriage on the day of my uncle's wedding."  
George didn't know about half the events Anna had listed "What's the matter?" he wondered and hugged her.  
"I was wearing a white flower girl dress, we were getting ready and suddenly there was blood running down my mom's thighs. She told me that everything was going to be fine and asked me to get garbage bags. My dress got covered in blood when I helped her to wrap them around herself. We drove to the hospital. The whole way to the hospital she told me she was going to be fine… I think I was in the room when they... " she started to cry again.  
"did it… " George nodded and completed the sentence.  
"Yeah, she didn't cry, she stared. She had eight miscarriages before I was born and two after. I was the only one who made it. She decided that they wouldn't try again after that one." She sighed "My dad started drinking and mom started to work crazy hours -and I was alone… I was alone. I was the most alone four-year-old you ever met."  
"It wasn't your fault." George said "You were a little innocent girl."  
"But it felt like it. I never felt like I was good enough. A year after that they had a huge fight. My mom went to her aunt's birthday on her own and my dad drank. He drank so much that he passed out."  
"What happened?" George wondered.  
"I called 911 and probably saved his life He was on the verge of liver failure when they airlifted us to the hospital. I spent the entire day in the ER waiting room on my own. I was a scared little girl…A neighbour who worked at the hospital took me home."  
"And your dad?" George wondered. This truly sounded like one of Meredith's horror childhood stories.  
"He started rehab and AA – and mom asked me to make sure he was okay." she whispered.  
"You were five." George said in disbelief.  
"And I stopped being a kid. I used to go to his AA meetings with him. I knew coping mechanisms before I ever knew what an addiction was." She laughed.  
"You are strong and amazing." George said "but it's okay to be said now."  
"No, it's not. Screw that. I never felt like I was good enough. I was a 4.0 student and state champion in Rhythmic Gymnastics and still felt like I had to do more to be noticed." She yelled.  
"Gymnastics?" George laughed.  
"Yeah"  
"You said your dad died." He said after a short pause.  
"He died when I was 17. Liver cancer- who'd guess after he had drowned himself in liquor." She sighed.  
"He started drinking again after the first time?" George wondered.  
"I always felt like it was my fault because I couldn't stop him, me and mom were never enough to make him stop."  
"Addiction doesn't work like that."  
"I know, but it feels like this. I was angry at him – for drinking- and for dying. I'm still angry at him... I took care of him… I was so angry… the day he died I was on a date… supposed to go… the first day in weeks… I didn't even make it out the door and when he took his last breath I was angry at him for ruining my date with Daniel… which makes me…" she paused.  
"human" George suggested.  
"No"  
"Yes it does" George kissed her.  
"I just don't feel like I want to fight no more I'm tired of fighting for my happiness because whatever I do…" she starred at the wall.  
"You are strong and beautiful and amazing." He whispered. "It's okay to be sad for a little while."  
"You said I was dark and twisty" Anna said  
"Your story is dark and twisty"  
"George, you don't need me." Anna told him.  
"But I want to be with you." George said and hugged her.

* * *

Meredith walked into Dr. Sander's office. She had not shaken off the events of the previous night yet when she saw who was sitting on the other chair "What is she doing here? Meredith looked at Dr. Sanders.  
"I told you, it's not a good idea" Amelia said and wanted to get up.  
"Hello Meredith, nice to see you." He smiled politely "Sit down! Both of you!"  
"Why is Amelia here?" Meredith wondered.  
"She'll be your mentor." He said.  
"They said "Her what?" and "My what?" at the same time and looked at each other. Whatever Meredith had planned to do; this scenario had not occurred to her.  
"She'll supervise you and I'll sign off on whatever procedure you are doing with her." Sanders said "You wanted secrecy, you get it. We'll do it this way or no way at all"  
"This is not a good idea." Meredith muttered.  
"Yeah, I'm not even a doctor yet." Amelia said "I'm only a fellow."  
"You passed your boards, you'll do" Dr. Sanders said "Your references are impeccable."  
"You are serious?" Meredith sighed.

* * *

Owen looked at the new ER doctor who was sitting in the parking lot. He was unaware of who he was when he walked up to him "What are you doing here?"  
"Thinking" James smiled "James Peterson, I don't think I got a chance to introduce myself before."  
"Why are you still here?" Owen wondered.  
"I have nowhere to sleep and the hotel is overbooked." He said "I needed time to think."  
"There are on call rooms for that" Owen suggested "You don't have to sit outside."  
"Only if you are on call." James said.  
"You can sleep on my couch tonight" Owen offered. "We help each other around here."

* * *

 _It's all everybody wants, right? Clean slate, a new beginning. Like that's going to be any easier. Ask the guy pushing the boulder up the hill. Nothing is easy about starting over. Nothing at all._

* * *

Meredith sat on her bed and cried. "It's a horrible day, an absolutely horrible day."  
"Why are you looking at the calendar like that?" Derek wondered.  
"It was a horrible day, the miscarriage…" Meredith swallowed "today was the day she would have been born."  
"I… I… you didn't say anything. You could have…" he paused and looked at her "we could have taken the day off"  
"I didn't know how to…" Meredith hugged him and started to cry.  
"Just say it: I need you. You say the words and I'm there." Derek reassured her "I'm busy, but I'll always try to be there."  
"we got Zola back and she and Chris are a handful…" Meredith tried to dry her tears, but kept sobbing "I hardly ever think about her but when I do, it just hits me… I feel like I can't breathe… I feel like I'm suffocating. When it happened it felt like it wasn't me, I was just an observer"  
"Do you want to talk about it?" he wondered.  
"I guess it's time. I guess it's time to talk. It's like when I was drowning. It just hurts so bad. I feel like I could have done something when I didn't have a chance. I broke down at work. Maggie found me. Is there anything you want to know?"  
"Did you leave because of it, is that why you went to Boston and didn't tell me where you went?" Derek wondered. "You went to see mom."  
"No, I found out during my second week there. I felt nauseous, first I thought it was a hangover, but the nausea didn't go away, so when I realized I was late… very very late… I took a test." Meredith paused "When I found out, I ..."  
"didn't know what to do" he nodded "Were you ever going to tell me? I mean, if you had stayed in Boston."  
"Eventually, I mean…" Meredith swallowed "I knew what it was like growing up without a dad, I wouldn't want my kids to grow up like that"  
"You could've… had an abortion" Derek sighed "I mean you were alone"  
"No, it would have been our child, I couldn't have. This child had a part of you and me. It's something I couldn't"


	53. Chapter 53

**Thank you for all the reviews! My hand is slowly getting better, but I have to take great caution not to over do things, so the updates are not as frequent as I would wish them to be.**

 **As for any pairings: just wait and see, I guess it'll all work out for you in the end ;)  
As for the rest: Derek won't get killed, I can guarantee that. Meredith and Amelia's relationship is going to develop further and for the rest: just wait and see!**

* * *

 **Chapter 5** 3

 _Work keeps our minds active, it keeps us out of trouble. When we're not working, our hands are idle and the devil will find work for idle hands to do. And when you have an idle mind, well, that's the devil's playground too._

* * *

Derek looked up to the door. The pasta he had prepared two hours ago was cold by now "You are late again." He told his exhausted wife.  
"Not super late." Meredith smiled and put her coat into the closet.  
"But late anyway…" Derek walked up to her and kissed her. He loved to wait for her "Your new attending, the one you don't tell me anything about, must be an ass."  
"Oh, SHE is a nice person most of the time." Meredith giggled.  
"You could tell me it's Bailey, I already know." He nodded. He had no clue who it was, she thought.  
"Well, you might be wrong. But I assisted on a super bad ass surgery, so it's cool." She said. "Cold pasta?"  
"I was invited to give a talk with Dr. Springer about the early stages of our trial, I think you should come with me." Derek smiled. Meredith wondered if he was onto her.  
"What about the kids?"  
"Amy can look after them- even though she's pretty busy these days – I hardly get to see her and we are working in the same department." Derek noted.  
"Maybe you don't know what's going on in your own department." Meredith smirked as she finally understood that Derek was unaware of her secret mentor.  
"I don't have a clue, do I?" he smiled and kissed her.  
"No, you don't."

* * *

Dr. Sanders walked through the ER and looked for a resident. "Dr. Kepner, do you have a minute?" he wondered when he saw the red head.  
"I'm going to get fired, won't I?" April looked up at him with widened eyes.  
"No, but I would like to talk to you in my office later today." He smiled. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you"  
April didn't quite hear what he was saying "If you want to fire me, do it now, I know I haven't been on top of my game lately." She insisted.  
Dr. Sanders nodded and tried to calm her down "The military asked me what you are going to do after you finished your residency, so I just wanted to hear what you are planning to do after next year. Seattle Grace is one of the best trauma centers on the West coast."  
"You want to offer me an attending position?" April starred at him.  
"A fellowship." He corrected her "You are a good surgeon, Dr. Kepner. You don't give up. General Simpson said you were in Iraq for three months."  
"Yeah, I just had to get away, learn. There were so many GSWs there, but you learn and you get to do a lot on your own." She missed the easy life there. It had been life or death and nothing inbetween. The intensity of every moment was something that made her heart go quicker. "You learn that every man is worth fighting for and you are helping your country because you are saving the people that defend our freedom overseas. You don't rest, ever minute there is this intensity."  
"DO you contemplate going back?" Dr. Sanders wondered.  
"I… honestly… I don't know." April said. She had nobody here.

* * *

"What the hell did you use my credit card for Amber? $150 you can't be serious!" Alex screamed at Amber when he walked into the kitchen.  
"I'll pay you back." Amber said apologetic. Obviously her brother had forgotten what she had spent the money on  
"What did you use it for? That's a lot of money." He wondered "It's not for this Ethan kid, is it?"  
Amber packed her books and walked out of the room "A dress for graduation. You said you'd take me and then you cancelled because you were paged."  
"Oh, that's right." Alex couldn't breath. He had given Amber shit for paying with his card even though he had promised to pay for the dress "I'm sorry. -and you don't have to pay me back obviously."  
Amber bit her lips and looked at her brother "Do you want to see it?"  
"Sure." Alex nodded and followed her.  
"I might need help with the zipper though." Amber said. In fact she knew she needed help. The assistant in the shop had helped her.  
"I only have experience with unzipping." He joked.  
"Ugh Alex, seriously!" Amber was grossed out. "That's so inappropriate."  
"You look hot, kiddo." Alex said "Mom would be proud if she saw you." He added when he saw her in her dress.

* * *

Morning had broken and beams of sunlight were shining through Owen's firehouse windows. Amelia and Owen had been awake for the better part of the night. "That was…" she meant to say unbelievable, but by the time she had wanted to say unbelievable Owen had carried her from the bed room to the kitchen counter where now her ex fiancé was looking at her from the couch.  
"James!" Amelia yelled "Christ, what are you doing here? Are you following me?"  
"You know him?" Owen looked at her in surprise.  
"He… " she tried to explain, but stopped after the first word when she realized she was naked, she ran back into the bed room.  
"Yes" James nodded.  
"I offered him a place for the night" Owen explained and saw Amelia coming out of his bed room again. She was fully dressed now. "What are you doing?" they both wondered.  
"I have to go" she said "Oh my God, my life has turned into a horror show and all I can do is to stand back and watch"

* * *

When George walked into their bedroom, he didn't see his girlfriend. Ever since her mother had died, she hadn't moved. She had cried and she had sobbed and she had starred at the ceiling with red eyes unable to sleep, but now she was out of sight. "Anna, I've come to get you. You're going to this meeting. It starts in 20 minutes. Anna?" George looked around and finally found her on the floor. "Where are you? Oh, are you okay? Where's the nanny?"  
"I didn't like her. So I fired her" Anna said and George figured that Sophie had probably been at the daycare center for that very reason.  
"Oh, great. Great. That's just great." He mumbled. For the past week he had taken care of Sophie on his own. He had even lied about what Anna had been doing. She had been away.  
"Why are you ..." Anna looked at him from the ground "I thought that I could do it on my own. Apparently, I was wrong."  
"Did you fall? Are-are you okay?" he wondered.  
"Do I look okay?" Anna sobbed.  
"I'm putting you in the shower." George said.  
"No, just get out! Hey!" she tried to fight him off  
"Do not talk to me that way." George yelled.  
"Please! Please get out!" she insisted.  
"Anna, Did you hear me? You did this!" he said with a firm voice "You've been in here for four days now. The funeral is tomorrow, you have to shower and you have to get up"  
"I can't even take care of myself!"  
"Yeah, and it's a problem because you now stink!" he said and lifted her into the shower "This bedroom stinks! Anna, look at me. You will get up now"  
"Oh! Get off of me!" she hit him, but he hugged her tighter until she started to cry.  
"I am not sharing my home with anybody - who smells like this! –" George said  
"Get off of me! Get off of me! - Get off of me! –" Anna tried to get back to the floor, but George was stronger. "No, I'll stay here and watch the big American Bake Off and you better get the hell out of here before you die too.  
"I have nowhere else to go!" he said "This is my life now, too! You know, I was, too."

* * *

Meredith saw Cristina in the locker room. She wasn't sure whether she should make the first step and talk to her or whether Cristina still needed some time on her own. "Why are you mad at me?" Meredith sat down next to Cristina. They hadn't talked.  
"I'm not mad at you." Cristina looked up at her friend.  
"You haven't been talking to me in a week. – I've been busy, but we never went so long without talking." Meredith reminded her.  
"I'm mad at myself. I hate feelings." Cristina admitted "They should be stuffed away inside a little box, but right now they are flying all over the place and I can't avoid them because your little loverboy banned me from the OR. I feel like a loser."  
"You're not. You knew everything when you started. Others can't ever learn what you were born with. You can't help that." Meredith told her friend. It was something she used to hate her mother for, but it was true for Cristina too.  
"God, the women in these magazines... Some of them are actual brides, you know, they're not all models. All smiling... It's like the only thing in the world that matters is that they find the perfect shoes to match that dress." Cristina sighed "God, you know, I knew these girls, I went to school with them... It's funny. I used to feel sorry for them. They're simple girls. They just wanna find the guy and get married, you know? Live. I don't know, I think you're either born simple or you're born... me. I wanna be the person who gets happy over finding the perfect dress, I wanna be simple, 'cause they can just live. Owen bought a ring before he dumped me. He was going to propose and I… I couldn't do that. You have kids and you are happy, but that's not me, I'd hate that child and I couldn't live with that feeling…"  
"Cristina, it's okay." Meredith nodded "You don't have to get married"

* * *

"Dr. Peterson. You paged." Meredith walked into Trauma 2 where she found Samantha Parker.  
"You can call me…" James tried to lighten up the mood.  
"Oh, I prefer not to mix business and personal stuff" Meredith said "Where's the patient?"  
"This is precisely what everyone is doing here." He reminded her.  
"Okay, fine, James. Amelia is not my best friend right now, so I'm a little biased. If you are pissed that she didn't show up here, that's not on me." Meredith clarified her point of view.  
"She fled the state and didn't tell me where she went, not my definition of unbiased." He sighed.  
"You are the fiancé" Meredith finally concluded.  
"She told people?" he asked and mumbled "That's so humiliating."  
"No, her mom did" Meredith paused "- and she told me, I'm pretty sure your secret is safe with me. She told me not to tell anyone – so I'd appreciate if you don't mention this conversation to her. Did you take the job because of her?"  
"It's desperate" he laughed  
"Pretty much." Meredith nodded.  
"Dr. Grey, do you wanna have coffee?" James tried to ask her out again.  
"Oh no, I don't think it's a good idea." Meredith insisted.  
"You call her Amy, she hates that name." James smiled.  
"Only Mark and Derek get to call her Amy, I know." Meredith giggled.  
"So you've heard of Mark and Derek." James noted "Your mentor-mentoree relationship must be pretty close."  
"I'm married to one of them and my oldest carries the name of the other one. Heard might be an understatement." Meredith smirked. Even though Amelia avoided James whenever she could, James was easy to talk to.  
"You must be the slutty intern." James shook his head.  
"Oh, you heard about me all the way back in Baltimore. I must be famous -and a lot more fun." Meredith winked.  
"Get those tests done." he said.  
"What about surgery?" Meredith wondered.  
"Let's try to treat the symptoms."  
"Why don't you want to look for the cause. Yeah, so what do you want to talk about… when we go out for coffee?" Meredith wondered.  
"Normal stuff, I had ramen noodles for the past four weeks, I'm living on someone else's couch and last night I started to talk to my television and this morning Amelia ..."he paused.  
"ever thought of leaving? I mean she doesn't want to talk to you." Meredith looked at the chart.  
"She's scared." James told Meredith who didn't quite understood what he meant.  
"-and she might be on drugs." Meredith joked.  
"She's using again?" James wondered.  
"Oh no, I don't know. I wouldn't trust her with my kids if she did. You showing up here – it brought up a lot of feelings – but she has her trial and she's a good surgeon. She's a runner, so if you want a chance wait for her to come back."  
"I think she's worth waiting for."  
"I'll do the tests now."

* * *

All attendings that currently had 4th year residents under their service were gathered in Dr. Sanders office. It was about time to pick the person that would be the best Chief resident. All of them had applied. Alex Karev had organized the African Orphan project, Meredith had taken part in many trials, Cristina Yang was Cristina Yang, George had made tremendous progress and was well liked among all members of the staff, Jackson was an Avery and April Keppner had served abroad for three months. All of their accomplishments had been collected in their files. "I paged all of you to decide on a new Chief resident. I'm suggesting Meredith Grey." Sanders insisted. He saw Meredith everyday now and thought it would come in handy when communicating major changes and the most important issues.  
"Why would you do that? She's really busy with our trial and she has two kids and…" Bailey looked at him, but Arizona and Owen were talking at the same time "What about Alex Karev? He organised the African Orphan project." "Or April Keppner, she's a very organised person?"  
"I'd suggest Cristina, but honestly, everyone in this room knows she's not good with people." Teddy laughed. Cristina was still walking a bunch of interns through a very special regime of post ops.  
"I want Avery, look at his family tree, he's a natural leader. He doesn't realize his full potential, but I learned to work with him, he isn't completely useless anymore." Mark smirked.  
"What about George O'Malley?" Bailey wondered.  
"If we continue like this, every single resident is going to be on the list. What do you think, Dr. Shepherd?" Dr. Sanders looked at Derek.  
"I can't vote for my wife for obvious reasons, even though I think she'd do a great job. But I do agree with Dr. Altman on Cristina." He said and wondered why he was supposed to have a say in this. No resident was in his department "She's someone who's meant to be in the OR, not stuck in an office."  
"So Yang is out of the mix." Sanders nodded.  
"And so is Grey- I need her to work with me." Bailey insisted. She and Amy had to make sure that Meredith got the time in the OR she needed. Sanders had briefed her before the meeting.  
"I want Avery and I won't go out without a fight." Mark looked at Sanders.  
"I'll observe O'Malley, Keppner and Avery this week and we'll get back to this table." The Chief nodded "Ladies and Gentleman, thank you"

* * *

Lexie was sitting in the gallery and looked at Amelia and Derek who were removing a tumor. If the surgery was successful the patient's FSH levels would return to normal.  
"Why is Zola here?" Meredith wondered when she came in.  
"Oh, we are watching her daddy operate. She asked me to take her here." Lexie smiled.  
"Yeah, he's been crazy busy lately." Meredith nodded "I guess that's all I get to see him these days. It's the adenoma, isn't it?"  
"Yeah, intranasal approach. I would have loved to be in there." Lexie sighed.  
"I should be in there, I mean, I caught it." Meredith nodded.  
"He doesn't know that you should be in there." Lexie reminded her "If you would tell him about neuro, you'd probably be in there."  
"I can't tell him. I mean, I don't even know if it's going to work out. Amelia is sending me to do all the consults she doesn't want to do" Meredith laughed.  
"Preferable the ones with dr. Peterson." Lexie teased her "What's the matter with those two anyway?"  
"You will find out soon enough…" Meredith suggested "I mean you are not the only one who doesn't know what she wants."  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
"All this will they/won't they drama with Mark and Jackson… it's not normal." Meredith took Zola and hugged her.  
"I'm with Jackson." Lexie nodded.  
"Then stop babysitting Maria while Mark goes back to his apartment to watch College Basketball." Meredith suggested.  
"He doesn't go out? Why would he pretend to go out and leave his daughter with me?" Lexie wondered.  
"I think you know the answer."  
"So he's doing this because he still loves me."  
"Grow up, Lexie. He's doing that because he knows that you don't know what you want. One day it's Mark, one day it's Jackson and the next day it's neither and next week you're back to any one of them. Grow up and figure out what you want. Mark is a good guy and so is Jackson and what you are doing is just as bad as what Owen has been doing to Amelia and Cristina."  
"Screw you!" Lexie got up and left Zola and Meredith in the gallery

* * *

Mark, Derek and Meredith sat on a table in the cafeteria "What's the matter with Amy?" Mark wondered when he saw her walking into the room and turning around the second she saw Dr. Peterson.  
"Her fiancé showed up" Meredith bit into her apple "Let me tell you it's not a pleasant feeling"  
"You were so much fun when Derek showed up here" Mark smirked.  
"Shut up, Sloan" Meredith mumbled.  
"I'm just saying…" Mark looked at her.  
"He's pretty nice though" Meredith admitted.  
"You worked with him?" Derek asked in surprise.  
"Yeah, all week last week and all I got to do were sutures and write about 40 doesn't believe in surgery." Meredith rolled her eyes.  
"James?" Mark smirked again.  
"I heard he moved in with Owen." Alex who sat down next to Meredith suggested.  
"Oh, that's going to be so much fun." Mark laughed.  
"Look after her, please. " Derek asked Meredith.  
"I'll do it." Meredith nodded even though she didn't know what Derek would think that they spend time together.

* * *

Two day later Meredith and Derek had left Seattle for a conference in San Francisco. It would be three days without the kids that Meredith thought they both needed. Ever since Amelia had started mentoring her most of her day was off limits to him. After Derek handed over the car keys to the valet, they walked to the registration desk. "Hello, I'm Dr. Derek Shepherd and this is my wife. We would like to sign in. Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital." Derek smiled at the young girl at the desk. She ticked off his name and handed over his name tag, but it took her some time looking for Meredith's name "Ms Shepherd, I'm afraid I can't find you here" she smiled politely  
"It's Dr. Grey." Derek suggested.  
"Oh, Ellis Grey." She nodded and ticked off that very name on her list "Here you are. Hope you have a fine day!"

Walking away Meredith rolled her eyes "Ellis Grey? Ellis Grey?" she looked at Derek and didn't quite now what to say "Why would Sanders use my middle name? Everyone is going to think I'm nuts: Ellis Grey. I should insist on getting a new name tag."  
"Or you went to a kick ass plastic surgeon." Derek smirked.  
"Shut up."

* * *

Amber walked into the house and Alex followed her. Neither one said a word and Alex was unsure about how to approach the issue. "What were you thinking?" he yelled after he had closed the door.  
"I just wanted to let loose" Amber said "Do you have any idea how stressful those exams can be?"  
"If you want to let loose, you don't do it in school." Alex said "You'll be suspended. This is going to be on your record."  
"Why do you even care?" Amber wondered.  
"Because I'm your brother and I don't want you to end up"  
"… like dad?" Amber asked "You know he's on a tour right now."  
"How do you know?"  
"I googled him." Amber said and showed Alex her phone.  
"I thought we talked. Seriously Amber, last week you buy a dress with my credit card and now you smoke pot." Alex lectured her "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Dad is an addict."

* * *

George sat on a bench next to Callie "I get how you felt with Sofia now. Honestly Callie, with Anna being like that…" he paused and looked at Callie for a second. "I can't do it. I never realized how much work a child can be."  
"Her mom died, just give her time to process that" Callie suggested.  
"Sophie has been asking for her – and honestly, she's in a state where I'm not sure if she should see her." George sighed.  
"When I was hiding in the closet, I wasn't nice to look at and Arizona knew what I needed" Callie said "she'd take Sofia with her and both of them would just sit next to me. It doesn't matter if you can help, it just matters that she knows you are there."  
"She kicked me out of our bed room -and she fired the nanny" George informed Callie.  
"Wow, didn't expect that to happen." Callie nodded  
"Good luck with your boards" George smiled softly.  
"I don't need luck George, I'm that good." Callie smirked "And you are good with kids, Sofia is happy when she's with you. I guess Sophie won't be too unhappy about it."

* * *

The conference started out with an opening dinner. Meredith had been to several occasions like those and had always detested the level of smalltalk involved in those kick off events. At least Dr. Springer was there. Derek was already at the table when a young African American woman introduced herself to Derek "It's my pleasure. I'm a huge admirer. If I told my mom, well not my mom, because she doesn't understand my fascination for medicine, but my real mom"  
Meredith interrupted her "Whom you never met because you were adopted right after you were born."  
"Meredith" Maggie said with a hint of digust.  
"Oh, you are Maggie, it's a pleasure to meet you." Derek extended his arm for a hand shake.  
"You are Derek Shepherd." She said and shook his hand.  
"Yeah, and you are Meredith's half sister." He nodded.  
"I thought you were dead." She said.  
"I never said he was." Meredith looked at Maggie.  
"You just never told me the truth" Maggie nodded "Everyone at the hospital wondered who turns down an offer from MassGen? And I couldn't tell them, but now I get it."  
"It's nice to meet you, Dr. Pierce." Derek said while pulling his hand back.  
Maggie hugged Meredith and whispered "You lied to me, we talked so much and you lied to me, you probably knew you were my half sister when we met the first time. And then after months you call me and tell me that the guy … that he's dying. Meredith, I didn't ask for this and I'll go now."

* * *

In the meantime, Lexie and Owen were standing in OR1 after a trauma case had come in.  
"What's the matter, Grey?" Owen asked when he noticed that Lexie was slightly distracted. She was still thinking about Meredith's words.  
"I'm mad at Meredith. She said something and I think she's right." Lexie explained "I have those two guys -amazing guys- and they are in love with me."  
"And you don't know which one to choose" Owen nodded. He wasn't unfamiliar to a problem like this  
"Yeah, I mean… I don't know… Jackson… it feels good, he makes me feel good and Mark… we'd not work out" Lexie stuttered while she tried to give suction.  
"Why did you and Dr. Sloan not work out?" Owen asked.  
"He wants marriage and kids and houses and I was afraid of commitment." Lexie admitted.  
"Why?"  
"Well, I'll still be a resident for a couple of more year and then I'll be a fellow and then I'm supposed to get my practice up and running. I'm just not ready for commitment. I mean I want kids, but not right away, not soon, and then there's Maria… and I had a plan and …" She was trying to be sensible.  
"sometimes plans are just that. Cristina doesn't want kids- that's different. You are just afraid to step forward and face the reality." Owen told her.  
"Doesn't that apply to Amy too?" Lexie wondered.  
"What do you mean?"  
"Her fiancé show's up her and she refuses to talk to him."Lexie told him.  
"Who is her fiancé?" Owen wondered.  
"The guy on your couch -Dr. Peterson." Lexie rolled her eyes.  
"That's why she left the other morning." Owen nodded.  
"and that's why she's hiding from both of you"

* * *

Derek looked at Maggie and Meredith who were sitting at the same table, but refused to acknownledge each other's existence "I need a drink. One single malt scotch please." Derek told one of the servers when they arrived  
"Tequila" both Meredith and Maggie ordered at he same time.  
"Wow, must be genetic" Derek smirked, buth both Meredith and Maggie rolled their eyes.  
"I have to go, I really have to go" Maggie said  
"Yeah, I have to go now and check on my kids" Meredith nodded "You four have fun"  
"you have kids? Like in multiple?" Maggie wondered and looked at her "You never mentioned…" She was an aunt.  
"One boy, one girl." Derek nodded "That's Christopher and that's Zola. We adopted her from an orphanage in Malawi."  
"Everything okay?" Derek wondered.  
"Meredith Grey." Dr. Springer finally figured out "She's your sister."  
"Half sister" Maggie insisted "Yeah, you figured that out, too. When I found out I was adopted - when I found out I had a sister, I always imagined first, I was gonna win her over with my talent and charm, and then I found my sister or she showed up at my workplace, and we got along great. She told me that I'm her sister and then she leaves and I don't hear anything for months. I think I hate her. She's terrible."  
"- She's not. She's –" Derek paused and tried to think of an adjective that was apt to describe her.  
"What am I doing? I have parents good, funny, kind, goofy parents. I don't need any screw it. Screw her. I am just fine without adding any random, unwanted blood relatives into my life. Oh, gosh." Maggie stammered. She looked at the tequila in front of her and told Derek "I'll pay you back tomorrow."  
"Not necessary." He insisted.  
"Why are you smiling?" Maggie wondered.  
"Because I remember how Meredith reacted when Lexie showed up." He laughed.  
"Who is Lexie?" Maggie wondered "We never really talked about Seattle."  
"One of her paternal half sisters."  
"I liked her, when we were working in Boston, I really liked her, but then she disappeared."  
"She's hard to get to know, but once you know her." Derek said "She's worth knowing."

* * *

Cristina was changing bed pans. This was something she had never done, but since she had been expelled from the OR, she had done more grunt work than she had in her intern year, but she looked grumpy most of the time. An old lady looked at her "Why do you look so miserable, dear?"  
"You wouldn't want to know." Cristina rolled her eyes.  
"It's a man, isn't it?" The woan wondered.  
"It has to be, it always has to be…" Cristina mumbled "because women can't have a problem men are not involved in, can they? Isn't that what you think."  
"No. I was an engineer, I never got married, but I had a passion. I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart." The woman said "I guess a loving woman is indestructible. You, dear, seem to be heart broken and lost".  
"I was banned from the OR. I'm not allowed to do the one thing I'm good at. -and my ex has a new girlfriend- so that's that. My life sucks right now." Cristina said "the surgery part does."  
"You want him back?"  
"No we wouldn't have worked out anyway, I want to be a surgeon, he wants a family. But it's dragging me down anyway."  
"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."

* * *

"Fricking crap! I hate you! I hate this!" Meredith sat in her toilet booth and cried. Usually live and death decisions weren't something she wasn't used to, but usually the patient or the family made the call whether they wanted a specific surgery. Now she was this family. "Why would he even do this? Decide if I die or life, it was so much fun with Ellis why don't you…I can't… I can't do this."  
She noticed a sound and when she looked up she saw Maggie's face "Are you okay?"  
"I am, sure." Meredith nodded "I do sound fine, don't I?"  
"What's the matter? I'm a good listener, you know." Maggie offered.  
"You wouldn't want to know." Meredith said.  
"Try me, you just blared out your mother's name. And you seem to be, well, certainly not fine about something."  
"I shouldn't talk to you about this. It's about…"  
"your mom and my biological father?" Maggie interrupted her.  
"I was going to say the guy my mother had an affair with, but yeah, I guess he's your bio dad – and apparently I'm his medical power of attorney. Can you believe this?" Meredith coughed "I mean obviously you don't know the whole story, but just let me tell you… he's the reason my parents' marriage fell apart. Ellis loved him. She never got over him. She… I… I don't know. He wants me to decide… why would he put a decision like this into my hands without even telling me?"  
"He isn't able to make it himself?" Maggie asked in surprise.  
"He has stage 4 cancer. They tried to resect it, but he's in a coma – and on the verge of organ failure. They are going to send me his labs and everything." Meredith said "and I have to make a decision"  
"He doesn't have anyone else?" Maggie wondered.  
"Well, his wife has Alzheimer. It's actually kind of ironic, my mom…" Meredith breathed in. So far nobody outside Seattle Grace knew.  
But Maggie added "had it too."  
"How do you know?" Meredith asked in surprise.  
"I got my genetical history when I was twelve, a lot of adopted kids do." Maggie admitted "and Derek told me last night"  
"So what am I supposed to do?" Meredith looked at her sister.  
"I don't know. Look at the charts." Maggie suggested. "Would you recommend the procedure to your patient?"

* * *

Two hours later Meredith and Maggie sat in Maggie's hotel room and Meredith went through his labs "He's dying, isn't he?" Meredith wondered. Meredith hadn't said anything for twenty minutes and there was this look of concern on her face that no normal doctor would miss.  
"Certainly looks like it. " Maggie nodded "It's weird. The first thing I see of my biological father are his medical charts. Can you tell me something about him?"  
"Apart from the fact that he's the reason my childhood was completely screwed up, he's a nice guy." Meredith laughed "He mentored me before he got sick and he promised Ellis he'd look after me. Well, lately I was looking after him but I guess that's a different story."  
"How did they meet?"  
"They were residents at the same hospital. She was the only female resident and... "  
"he was the only black resident." Maggie nodded.  
"Yes. Anyway, they were both married and Ellis had me. She had me in med school and I was the child she never wanted." Meredith's eyes teared up. Ellis had never made her feel loved, but yet she had kept her.  
"You were the child she kept." Maggie suggested "Don't get me wrong, but she gave me up for adoption. So they had a one night stand?"  
"No" Meredith said and looked at the charts for a minute "for my mom he was the love of her life. She never got over him and she got cold. She wasn't a warm person. I'm not sure about Richard. He never divorced his wife."  
"Do they have kids?" Maggie wondered.  
"No."  
"So she gave me up because he didn't want me?" Maggie wondered "He must have known about me"  
"No, I think she never told him. Hardly anybody knew. I only found out when I was pregnant and reading through one of her journals." Meredith said.  
"She wrote about the pregnancy?  
"No, she didn't write much about her private life. I'm hardly mentioned in the story, but she wrote lists of hat she had eaten everyday and she stopped drinking wine while writing. So she wanted you to be fine." Meredith said "I could try to find that journal. She wrote everything down, she was very tedious that way."  
"Why didn't you mention anything when we met in Boston? I mean you knew back then, didn't you?" Maggie asked "You never mentioned your name."  
"I never knew or well I could have known, but I had a million other things on my mind… It was difficult, hard…"

* * *

"Jackson, I'm glad you came. Congratulations on becoming Chief resident." Dr. Sanders greeted him.

"I was surprised." He said when he sat down "Please tell me you picked me based on recommendations, not on my last name. But that's the reason, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you were the obvious choice." Dr. Sanders explained

"Because my grandpa is Harper Avery." Jackson sighed.

"No, because you were a leader. People listen to Averys."

"Let Yang or Grey do it"

"Grey?" he wondered. Meredith had been his original choice, but for some reason her two mentors had disapproved.

"Meredith Grey. She's…Never mind, I have to go, interns to teach, patients to save. I never applied for the job." Jackson said "and if you picked me based on my last name I don't want it either."

"Wait!" Sanders insisted.

"What do you want?" Jackson wondered.

"I need an ally."

"An ally? This isn't war, Dr. Sanders. Respectfully."

"Can you page Dr. Grey for me?" he wondered. "Lexie Grey."

* * *

James walked towards Amelia and Zola. It had been a long day and Amelia was happy that it wouldn't be too long until her brother's return "Zola, we have to go." She said.  
"He wants to talk." Zola looked at Amelia.  
"Well, he can talk to somebody else." Amelia smiled, but James had caught up by then.  
"Amelia."  
"James, I'm not going to do this in front of my niece." Amelia told him firmly.  
"When are you going to do this? I tried to talk to you all day." James insisted "I tried to talk to you ever since I saw you."  
"You showed up at my hospital." Amelia told him.  
"I didn't know you worked here until the interview." James told her.  
"So you knew when you made the decision." Amelia nodded.  
"It was a good offer and not everything is about you -and you still haven't answered my question."  
"Can we go now, Amy?" Zola pulled her arm and looked at Amy.  
"Isn't running off to Seattle enough of an answer?" Amelia told James.  
"Why don't we talk tomorrow night? 8.30 pm, I'll pick you up here." James tried to offer.  
"I don't think there's anything to talk about."

* * *

When Derek returned to the hotel room, Meredith was waiting for him on the bed.  
"What are you doing?" he wondered when he saw her.  
"Oh, you've been so busy Dr. Shepherd" Meredith smirked.  
"Now I'm Dr. Shepherd again?" he wondered flirtatiously..  
"Get undressed."Meredith pulled him closer and kissed him.  
"What's going on?" he wondered.  
"You haven't been home the last couple of days, I missed you and I just want to show you how much I missed you. And I can't do that unless you take off that shirt."  
"Maybe I should stay at the hospital more often if you are this welcoming when I come back." He joked.  
"Oh, I have you all for myself tonight -and tomorrow we'll be back in Seattle and there will be duckies in the tub and right now it's just you and me."

* * *

Owen looked at Alex who was rather distracted during surgery. He held the clamps and gave suction whenever he was supposed to, but he lacked the passion Owen used to see in Alex "Who do you choose if you truly love one person, but she's never going to give you the future you want? She's the right kind of messed up. But you don't love her the way you love the other one." Owen asked.  
"Maybe you shouldn't be with anyone until you have figured out what you want instead of hurting both of them." Alex said "sometimes it's better to not try to hard."  
"How do you decide?" Owen wondered "Surgery can be done two ways and both ways might kill the patient."  
"You look at yourself and you pick what feels right for you and when you decide you forget all about the pain and hurt it might cause and you go with that decision." Alex said "Can you excuse me for a second?"

* * *

Before driving home, Meredith made a quick stop at the house. Alex had texted her 911 and asked her to talk to his sister after the pot incident. "Amber, Alex is trying. He's really trying. He's taking time off work to be there for you." Meredith told Amber.  
"Who are you? The teenager police?" Amber looked at her and tried to get back to her books.  
"Angry attitude? Whole world against you? Been there, done it" Meredith nodded "Doesn't get you anywhere. You can get into a decent college, if you don't screw up now. You are smart. You can get a degree and, well, you don't really have to worry about what comes after that. A boy is not worth ruining your life for!"  
Amber who had appeared to be uninterested until Meredith said boy looked up "How do you know it's a boy? Alex doesn't know." Amber admitted.  
"It's always a boy with us angry teenage girls. So who is he?" Meredith asked.  
"Are you going to tell him what we talked about?" Amber wondered.  
"No. Promise." Meredith said  
"Ethan, he's in my class, he's a musician, they play in a band. He's very talented. And an amazing kisser." Amber blushed  
"Don't tell me the specifics, just promise me to be safe and to wait until…"  
"… marriage?" she looked sceptical.  
"No, god no, until you are sure that it is what you want" Meredith laughed "and cut Alex some slack. He only tries to look out for you. He's trying."

* * *

"you can't talk to a patient like that" Amelia dragged Meredith out of a room. She had just told Samantha Parker that pathology said the adenoma didn't contain cells for FSH or LH, but the FSH was still high.  
"that's why people don't trust you inside their OR, that's why they don't want you to be Chief resident" Amelia told Meredith "Sanders wanted you to be Chief resident, but Derek and Bailey spoke up against it."  
"You didn't just say that." Meredith looked at Amelia "I'm right, Amelia. I had a right to tell her. And why are you lying to me? Derek would never do that."  
"He did. You had a right to tell her attending. Next time you notice something like this, you talk to me and don't pull this crap." Amelia yelled at Meredith.  
"She was right though" James leaned over to Amelia and whispered into her ear. "and I'm still waiting to have those fries with you"

* * *

Amy stormed into Derek's office. This was the first hint of Hurricane Amelia he had seen ever since she had shown up at his door. "Derek, you have to fired Dr. Peterson" she insisted.  
"He's an ER doctor. That's not my department" Derek told her.  
"You have to" Amy insisted.  
"What happened Amy?"  
"Don't Amy me. He's impossible." Amelia ranted.  
"What happened?" Derek asked again.  
"He asked me to marry him" Amelia blarred out.  
"Wow, that was quick" Derek noted.  
"Not here, in Baltimore." Amelia said.  
"And you want me to fire him because he followed you? Is he a stalker?" Derek wondered.  
"No, but yeah, isn't there some rule against this?" she wondered.  
"There isn't actually." He looked at her with a hint of concern "You two can do whatever you want or don't want."  
"Everyone knows about Hunt and me… " Amelia said  
"Dr. Peterson doesn't." Derek guessed.  
"Oh he does, believe me, he does…" Amy blew off some steam, but she couldn't tell Derek the story.  
"He's new and he seems to care about you." Her brother said.  
"Yeah, and that's the problem. I don't want to drag him down with me -you know how I get." Amelia said "I don't want to destroy him"

* * *

Meredith, Cristina and April had hit one of the night clubs close to the hospital to blow off some steam, but as being a 4th year resident meant that they still had to take care of interns, it wasn't long until one of them received a page. Meredith ran into the hospital in her heels and ran into Derek with her black dress. He kissed her and she excused herself and ran to the lab where a helpless Bailey was trying to rescucitate one of the mice while Dr. Hilman was standing behind her.  
"observe all of them. Ten of the mice are in critical condition" Bailey told Meredith.  
"interns do it" Meredith mumbled and looked at Dr. Hilman who smiled apologetically.  
"no, Meredith, this is important, I trust you" Bailey said  
"So please tell me, why am I here`?" Meredith wondered "This is my night off and there are two of you"  
"Five of the mice developed hypoglycaemia." Dr. Hilman explained.  
"That shouldn't have happened. What did you to do them?" Meredith grabbed the charts out of the intern's hand.  
"Grey, calm down. Dr. Hilman didn't do anything wrong. They were inserted correctly." Bailey said  
"So the problem comes with the devices. and that was me thinking I could have a night out." Meredith nodded and grabbed a lab coat.

* * *

George and Jackson sat in one exam room to hide from everyone else "I look at April and oh… my imagination will get me a passport to hell one day." Jackson said. All of this had started the second he had gotten back with Lexie "I only started to get back with Lexie, but now I look at her and it feels like I want her. I know this can't happen"  
"because you love Lexie." George nodded.  
"Yeah"  
"What about your proposal, I mean you bought that ring and now it's sitting in a box in your drawer in the nightstand?" Jackson tried to change the topic.  
"She's in no condition, her mom died" George explained "She.. needs time".  
"Maybe sometimes we should just ignore the circumstances and do things, take the next step." Jackson suggested.

* * *

Alex walked into Amber's room. She had disappeared after Meredith had talked to her and he was surprised to find her on her bed with one of her biology books in front of her "What are you doing?" he wondered.  
"Studying. My final exams are in three weeks." Amber said  
"I can help you." He offered and grabbed one of the books.  
"I don't need help Alex, I 'm fine, but thanks."Amber nodded.  
"I want to be there when you graduate." Alex said  
"I probably won't be allowed to go to the ceremony after the other day" Amber sighed. "But it's okay, we can do our own thing."  
"Well, we could have our own ceremony. I'll take you out for a milkshake." Alex suggested. Before he went to med school Amber used to love milkshakes at the diner.  
"Oh, a milkshake is all I'm getting?" Amber giggled "I'm kidding, you know that, right?"  
"Yeah" Alex nodded  
"you know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch" Amber told him "at least I'm trying"

* * *

As most other residents were walking, George, Jackson and April had decided to toast on Jackson's big promotion on their own. He would be Chief resident. "To Mercy West" April raised her glass. "Who would have thought that we'd get so far"  
"I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why we are so amazing friends." Jackson nodded and toasted to both of them. While George was quick to reprocicate the gesture, April starred at Jackson mumbling "Friends, yeah…We are friends"

* * *

Callie sat down on George's side of the bed. Anna was siitting on the other side while George was at work. "You get to be mad. You get to have all of your feelings as long as you know, you have to know that she loved you and that's not going to change"  
"My daughter, she doesn't understand what's going on. Intellectually, I get that, but every time she asks, "where's daddy?" or "where's granny?" I have to remember to breathe." Anna cried and Callie took her hand "It's always the same thing. I tuck her in. I say "I love you," she says, "I love you," and then she says "where's daddy?" And I tell her again. I'd almost gotten used to it. But last night was different. My daughter has reached acceptance. She knows her grandma is never coming back and called George Daddy and it breaks my heart."  
"Honey, you can have more than one dad. George chose to take care of Sophie and he's Sofia's dad and he's amazing at it. It'll be okay." Callie smiled.

* * *

Meredith had just gotten home when Amelia walked into the house "I can't do it." Amelia kept walking up and down the room.  
"Do what?" Derek wondered.  
"Get engaged, look after the kids, I can't." Amelia repeated. While Meredith and Derek observed Amelia who walked up and down the room.  
"James is a nice guy." Derek insisted.  
"But you don't have to get married." Meredith said.  
"My mom likes James." Derek smirked.  
"and your sister doesn't love him, do you?" Meredith looked at Amelia who was still struck for words.  
"I don't know if I do -and he said the words – and I just looked at him and ran." Amelia stopped.  
"You came here straight away?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, I was in surgery all night – and now I'm freaking out." Amelia said "So please someone, tell me what to do."  
"Come here, we'll drive out to the woods and go fishing." Derek tried to calm her down.  
"I'm not going fishing with you." Amelia said "I need to cut. I could be in the OR all day and just ignore him."

* * *

"Dr. Grey told me to find you." The intern smiled.  
"What does she want?" Dr. Bailey looked up from her salad.  
"We compared healthy and hypglosemic mice. It looks like the islet cells are being rejected." The intern summarized the notes on her flipboard.  
"So, it's not the device. That's good." She nodded "It could be a reoccurance of auto immunity."  
"Or a problem with the ingraphment which you checked." Dr. Hilman nodded.  
"Maybe it's not the cells being rejected. Maybe there just not surviving because of other causes." Bailey said. "So we should check for signs of rejection.  
"Exactly." Dr. Hilman held up her fist "Bump me." Bailey ignored her

* * *

 _At first, idleness can seem like a welcome distraction: The troublemaking and the fun. Everyone needs some idle time to focus on something other than work, even if it means focusing on something that's a little bit scary. Stepping back from work is the only way to change perspective. And it's only after we had everything in perspective that we remember where our hands truly belong._

* * *

"What do you want Owen? I have a patient." Cristina looked at her ex boyfriend. Owen had paged her to his office and now she was looking at him.  
"You make me sad. You think that surgery is going to make you feel, you think a successful career is gonna make you happy, you think you know things, you know things and nothing else matters. No one else matters. People do matter. I matter. We...we matter. So you don't get to toss me aside. I won't let you" he walked up to her "I love you"  
"Owen, we have to let each other go. I love you, but a cut cannot heal unless you leave it alone. If we keep talking it's like opening mine daily, leaving the bones exposed. So we shouldn't be working together. I'll be in the OR with Dr. Altmann" Cristina said and turned around.


	54. Chapter 54

It's my birthday, but here's a present for all of you! Hope you like it!  
Thank you for your reviews! I love reading all of your reactions!

* * *

 **Chapter 54: 5th year**

 _Backaches, jaw pain, nausea. In men, these things are probably exactly what they seem like. But in women, they're all symptoms of a heart attack. Sometimes, the symptom is hiding what's going on underneath. It's all in the way it presents itself._

Answer every page at a run. Day one of internship and that's the one thing that truly had not changed. "You paged." Meredith was breathless when she arrived in trauma one.  
"Yeah, Samantha Parker is back." Dr. Sanders handed her the chart "Your name is on her chart and Dr. Shepherd is in surgery."  
"What is it?" Meredith asked surprised.  
"abdominal pain, acid-base balance not good"  
"She had a brain tumour, that doesn't make sense." Meredith looked at him "Do you think we missed something?"  
"Order a CT and please tell me that you are going to tell the other Dr. Shepherd about your specialisation soon." He smirked "By now with all the rumours he must think that you are sleeping with me."  
"Oh, he does" Meredith nodded.

* * *

Cristina looked at the heart monitor like she had for the previous sixteen hours. "Call Unos, Yang. He needs that heart yesterday." Dr. Altman told her after the exam.  
"Okay." Cristina nodded. She knew she'd have to do that. She knew it before she had paged her attending.  
"Are you okay?" Teddy wondered.  
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just… he got his first transplant during my intern year. I performed the surgery with Burke -and now he's back and needs another one." She sighed "-and now he's old enough to understand that he's waiting for someone else to die."  
"Well, you can't grow a heart." Dr. Altman sighed.  
"You should be able to do that." Cristina insisted.

* * *

Callie, Derek and Jackson stood in the OR. Today had been one of those days. Trauma after trauma and by now nobody was sure if it was daylight or night-time.  
"What's the matter Avery?" Callie looked up from the joint.  
"I feel like a constant failure – all the time."  
"You are the Chief resident – that's part of the job description." Callie smirked "I sucked at it. I sucked so bad, I was fired from it."  
"That's true. She was terrible." Derek nodded.  
"Thank you! Anyway, I decided that Sofia should play with kids her age." Callie told them.  
"She's at day-care or you could bring her over" Derek suggested.  
"I was thinking non doctor families." Callie told them "She needs to see how normal people live. Cutting people open screws with your life."  
"True enough" Jackson nodded.  
"Why are you looking all sad Mc Dreamy?" Callie teased him "Don't tell me you get those rumours get in your head."  
"Oh they do. Meredith is staying late and leaving early, she's in his office every day and she's keeping something from me." He sighed. "I miss her"

* * *

Someday things change and you are no longer solely responsible for yourself, but also for others. George stood in the classroom with thirty interns from different departments. Today's class was not about medicine; it was about people. Dr. Sanders had asked him to talk about bedside manner "If you see a patient who is gross, don't make faces, don't show him he's here to get better." He started.  
"What if he's fat?" a guy who looked like he had been a jock in high school wondered.  
"Well, you don't say something like 'the Circus is coming to town and the first thing they brought was the elephant'. You'll get kicked off the case." George smiled "You do as much as laugh silently; you'll get kicked off the case"  
"How are we supposed to do that?" a girl wondered.  
"Provide them with the level of care you'd like to receive if you are not compassionate enough"

* * *

Hours later Meredith and Amelia arrived at the house together "Late again?" Derek wondered  
"Sorry, Sanders has me working on all his special cases" Meredith sighed.  
"So that's why you are late all the time -and in his office" Derek said.  
"So that's why you are jealous all the time – and hostile." Amelia teased her brother and walked straight to the fridge.  
"Derek, I love you, but he's the Chief and I'm a 5th year resident. I just have to do what he tells me." Meredith kissed his cheek. "And I have two kids and right now it just feels like I can't get out of the hospital."  
"Well, you could take the day off, Callie wanted to take Sofia to a playgroup – I could call her and you could go with them." Derek suggested.  
"and get away from Dr. Sanders for the day" Amelia winked at Meredith with a big smirk on her face.  
"That's another benefit" Derek nodded.

* * *

The paramedics brought in a patient and handed over the chart to one of the interns who had started their first week of work. "I don't have a name" the intern looked up from the chart, but didn't say it lout enough for anyway to notice.  
"Amber, oh my God. Page Dr. Karev" Lexie said.  
"No. He doesn't need to know." Amber insisted. Her face was bruised and cut, her shirt torn apart and as far as she could tell there were hematomas in the abdominal area.  
"What happened?" Lexie wondered and examined her more closely. "Oh, my God, Amber."  
"You know her?" the intern wondered.  
"Get away, I'll take care of this, page Mark Sloan." Lexie said.

After the intern had left, Lexie pulled the curtain around Amber's bed "What have you done now?"  
"I fell." Amber lied  
"No you didn't."  
"And I don't need help, I'm fine." Amber said and pulled her torn apart shirt back down.  
The curtain moved and Mark walked in. "You look like you've been beaten up…"  
"I fell." Amber repeated what she had told Lexie.  
"That's bullshit. And you need stitches." Mark said.  
"I can do that myself." Amber insisted and tried to get up, but Mark held her.  
"Not if you don't want to look like Frankenstein." He smirked "Christ, Amber, I can't leave Maria with you if you do something like that."  
"Do what?" she wondered "I had a fight. That's all"  
"A fight with Mike Tyson?" Mark wondered.  
"Shut up and just stitch up my face." Amber mumbled.

* * *

The first patient of Meredith's day was Samantha Parker. The imaging was finally available. "right ovary is twisted and there's no sufficient blood supply" the intern who was on Dr. Sander's service showed them.  
"The pancreas is the self-destruct button of the body." Sanders and Meredith whispered at the same time. It was something her mother used to say.  
Meredith and Dr. Sanders looked at each other and laughed. "Book an OR" he told her.  
Meredith nodded and almost walked into Derek. He took the chart she had with her and looked through it "Didn't realise you were considering salmon scrubs" he smirked and handed the chart back to her  
"and I didn't realise you were a stalker" Bailey who was walking right pass them mumbled.

* * *

April stormed into the Chief resident's office. Oncology – she thought to herself "Jackson, why am I not on trauma?" she yelled.  
"Lexie is on trauma and I thought it might not be the best idea to assign both of you to the same attendings." He looked up from his paper work.  
"I want to specialize in trauma." April reminded him.  
"And Lexie hasn't met the minimum requirements in this particular specialty, I'm sorry." Jackson explained "You told me you hate her last night"  
"Don't you think we can be civil around each other?" April wondered.  
"No, I don't think you can. You tried to kiss me last night – and I don't think you should be around her." Jackson said  
"I wouldn't stab her with a scalpel." April rolled her eyes.

* * *

Tumour resections were scheduled at night which meant that by 8.00 am Meredith and Amelia had already been in the OR for six hours.  
"wow, that was …close and you were..." Meredith paused. Amelia had just removed an impossible tumour -a tumour she had not told her brother about.  
"I'm like that… all bomb shelly. Hurricane Amelia… I'm sure Derek told you all about it…" she laughed.  
"No, actually he didn't." Meredith looked at Amelia "So, Hurricane Amelia, what was she like?" If she was anything like her teenage self, Amelia would have been intense.  
"A force of nature, fearless, she wasn't afraid of anything." Amelia thought back on her youth.  
"What happened?"  
"Life happened." Amelia said shortly. Her drug problem had never been something she felt comfortable talking about.  
"Life happened?" Meredith didn't look convinced "That's BS"  
"I took drugs."  
"I know that…" Meredith said "So, what happened in Baltimore?"  
"I did my residency in Baltimore."  
"You are a smartass." Meredith smiled.  
"Okay, James proposed -and I felt it was too fast." Amelia admitted "A year is too early to propose. I mean look at Derek and you… you've everything figured out."  
Meredith burst out into laughter. The day of their first wedding anniversary had been 365 days after the day they had seen each other for the first time "I proposed the night we met -and I didn't know I had married him. How did you meet him?"  
"I walked into him in the ER -after I had slept with him" Amelia smiled "Classic, pick him up in a bar, go to his place, leave early and hope that you don't ever see him again"  
"Why don't you want to marry him?" Meredith wondered.  
"He's a republican." Amelia blared out. It was the first thing she could think of that wasn't perfect for her.  
"Oh my god, you've been in bed with a republican." Meredith giggled and Amelia joined in.  
"I didn't know you were..." Amelia looked at Meredith. Thinking about it they had never discussed politics.  
"Oh, you don't realise. When I advertised the rooms at mom's house I put "Bush supporters need not apply" on the note" Meredith told her.  
"Good girl." Amelia nodded "James… he knows about the drugs, but he doesn't know that I relapsed. I went to rehab before I came to Seattle."  
"Is that the reason you don't want to talk to him or is it that thing you had with Owen? Whatever that is." Meredith wondered. Amelia looked down and Meredith instantaneously knew she had overstepped a boundary.  
"Meredith, I don't really want to talk about it." Amelia said.  
"Okay." Meredith nodded.

* * *

"Why am I on trauma again?" Lexie stormed into Jackson's office.  
"You don't have the minimum hours." Jackson looked up to her.  
"I do." Lexie insisted.  
"Look, here, more than enough. I should be on neuro." Lexie insisted "Remember, I want to specialize in neuro and 4th and 5th years are supposed to be placed in their specialty."  
"crap, I thought…" he paused and looked at her "Don't be mad! I hate this… all this paper work"  
"And Meredith's Hillman is assigned to Amelia." Lexie noticed.  
"That's right." Jackson nodded. This was something Dr. Sanders had requested.  
"That'd mean Meredith is assigned to Amelia." Lexie reminded him.  
"Why are you looking like that?" he wondered.  
"Oh, if this is correct, I'm surprised that they didn't go all pro-wrestling on each other yet." Lexie smirked. Apparently Derek wasn't the only one who was unaware of Meredith's extended stay on Amelia's service.

* * *

Derek smirked when he heard two interns gossiping about his wife "Dr. Grey is hot." One of them told the rest.  
"I saw her in Sander's office. She's going there every night" the other one said.  
"I thought she was married to Dr. Shepherd."  
"Yeah, but they don't really talk and with two kids…" the jock smiled "you never know… I might have a shot "  
Derek cleared his throat and looked at both of them "We'll see about that, Dr. Williams, I think you are on my service today"

* * *

Lexie walked up to Mark who was peacefully eating a salad all by himself "We have to tell Alex, don't we?"  
"I think she was pretty clear about it." Mark looked at Lexie.  
"But she's not okay, and if you are not okay and emotionally confused you need someone." Lexie insisted.  
"About help… you can only help someone if she wants help, Amber doesn't want help" Mark sighed.  
"But, look at her. She got beaten up and... Alex said she has a boyfriend, what if he did it?" Lexie said "Shouldn't we protect her? Shouldn't we tell him something? I read an article about…"  
"Lexie. You are a doctor and it'd be a HIPAA violation." Mark interrupted her.  
"But you do agree that she was acting weird in there?" Lexie wondered.  
"You are the expert on that." Mark rolled his eyes "and now go – go and be with Jackson."

* * *

"What are you doing?" Meredith walked up to Cristina who was still starring at the heart monitor.  
"Waiting for some sort of divine intervention -and keeping track of his vitals." Cristina said.  
"Have you been here all night?" Meredith wondered.  
"I called UNOS four times within the past 24 hours." Cristina sighed.  
"So eager to get back to the OR?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, I just want him to get this heart. I haven't had sex for like three weeks and I think it's giving me super powers. Everything is bright and clear. I am solving problems." Cristina said with a smile on her face "No wonder Kepner is so organized, she has virgin super powers and still"  
They got up and paged an intern who would take over the observation for Cristina. Dr. Altman walked pass them and asked for an update. "If he doesn't get a heart within the next 24 hours there's nothing I can do. He's going to die."  
"and he doesn't have an LVAD" Meredith joked.  
"I like the dark you" Cristina said "Welcome back"  
"I have to go, tumour resection" Meredith smiled.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later a slow day turned into a busy one. MVP 5 kids and 3 adults were involved and the ER expected 4 minor cases, 1 normal, 3 critical. "Where's Meredith?" Jackson looked around.  
"OR 1" Cristina said.  
"Oh yeah. Yang, you get the first ambulance, Hunt will be there with you" Jackson said "Karev, multiple paediatric traumas, Dr. Robbins will be there, they are critical, get them to an OR, I'll take the other kid and…" he looked around "Lexie you and Dr. Durkan will take the second kid, multiple head trauma. Shepherd is on his way, but it'll be a while until he's here."  
"You forgot one. There are five kids" George said quietly.  
"George, you are in charge of that"  
"Now all of you, just cut and let the real doctors do the rest." James told them. "I don't need mini surgeons here; I have my own interns."

* * *

Meanwhile Meredith stood in the OR with Dr. McCann, the head of OBGYN and Dr. Sanders. Suddenly there was an eruption, a loud bang and they felt a wave of energy.  
"We should continue." Sanders said  
"Don't you think that it's more important to save ourselves?" Dr. McCann wondered "Who knows if there isn't a second explosion"  
"No, because she'd be dead if we leave her like that and I invested too much time in this patient to leave her like this" Meredith insisted.  
"Feel free to go, Dr. McCann, we can take care of the rest" Dr. Sanders said.  
"So you are a specialist on reproductive organs now?" Meredith wondered. "I mean we have to untwist the ovary"  
"Fellowship in obstetrics." Sanders told her.  
"Never realized that." Meredith mumbled.  
"Oh, you didn't keep track on my career. I'm offended." Dr. Sanders smiled.  
"There it is." Meredith said. "You can go ahead."  
"I didn't know you had trained in OB" Sanders looked impressed.  
"When I was pregnant I was working with Addison Montgomery a lot. I'M OFFENDED YOU didn't keep track on my career."  
Suddenly Derek came in and the laughter stopped "You have to get out of here"  
"What are you doing here?" Meredith looked at him  
"There was an explosion" he said"  
"We know" Dr. Sanders said "Your wife decided to stay on."

* * *

Explosions. One minute your fine and the next one you are on the floor. Now she was back up and trying to clean herself up. She had to get out and was trying to make her way out of the dusty OR when Jackson came in.  
"What's the matter?" Lexie wondered when Jackson stormed in. Her face was still covered in dirt.  
"I thought you were dead." Jackson admitted "When I heard the explosion…"  
"I'm okay, what happened over there?" she wondered. "There was a loud bang"  
"They said one was the gas pipes had a lack." Jackson said.  
"Is everyone okay?" Lexie wondered. The power was out and both of them were barely able to see one another.  
"I don't know. But you are. You are okay. If you had died and I wouldn't have gotten a chance to kiss you today, I would have regretted this for the rest of my life." Jackson smiled.  
"I'm so sorry we fought this morning" she whispered and kissed him.  
"Well, we could fight every morning for the rest of our lives" he kissed her.  
"That'd wonderful" she nodded.

* * *

"I hate this" April mumbled. She still only heard a beeping sound and she had to adjust her eyes.  
"What are we going to do?" the intern wondered and looked at the monitors.  
"We are going to talk to his parents about their options?" April looked at them.  
"He's braindead. Do you mean organ donation?" he wondered and started to smile "That's awesome."  
"No it's not, and we are going to hand this woman the worst day of her life." April started to lecture him "She was fine this morning, she dropped him off at school -she gets the call. She'll remember your face, she'll remember my face and all she'll think about is that God handed her the worst part of her life. So no, it's not awesome."  
"But the harvest." the intern insisted.  
"I think I'll go in there on my own." April yelled "We've just lost this patient because we were in a fricking explosion and you think it's awesome you get to do a harvest? Know what? You are off this case"

* * *

One day later Meredith and Callie pulled up in front of a house not too far from Ellis's old house. "This will be so exciting" Callie smiled. "No talking about surgery, no pages, just us and a few normal people."  
The door was opened and they saw a highly styled woman in her late 30s "Oh, what a pleasure, you must be Callie and you must be Meredith." She said  
"Yeah, and those three are Zola, Sofia and Christopher." Meredith introduced the kids.  
"Come in, we'll have a chat and there's a sitter for the kids." She said.  
Meredith and Callie exchanged a look "There's a sitter" Meredith mumbled.

* * *

Lexie was still assigned to the ER when she saw Amber and guided her to one of the beds close by "I don't need help. I'm fine, I want to go now. I just need some painkillers." Amber told her.  
"You are not fine. What happened, Amber?" Lexie wondered "Just let me examine you. Check for fractures and residual bleeding. You came back and now you are asking me for painkillers."  
"Don't page Alex." Amber insisted.  
"Are you sure? It was Ethan who did this to you, wasn't it?"  
Amber looked away. And bit her lips "I fell, get that? I fell."  
"Amber, you don't get injuries like this from falling" Lexie insisted. "You barely made it out of that fight. If this was Ethan, you can't go back there."  
"You don't get it. He loves me! He just lost his temper because he was…" she yelled "he saw me talking to someone and he got angry and they got angry and…"  
"I can call the police if you want to. You can press charges." Lexie offered "You are safe here"  
"He didn't do anything. I fell, get it?" Amber repeated "I fell. He loves me and you don't get it because you aren't in love with Jackson, you just need someone that makes you feel good."

* * *

"Why don't we go in and you can say goodbye?" April accompanied the mother to the room where her son was still attached to a breathalysers.  
Two interns were standing there and taking notes "and the harvest. That'll be so much fun."  
"Yeah, just because this kid turned into a potato"  
April looked at the woman in shock and interrupted them. As horrible as their words had been to her, they must have been a thousand times more painful to her "Are you insane? Get out of the room."  
"Are you really thinking that I might consider giving away my son's organs after hearing that?" the woman looked at her.  
"I'm so sorry you had to hear that, those are interns who recently started their training. Take all the time you need." April apologized "You can ask a nurse to page me if you have any further questions."

* * *

"Thank god this is over. This was bad." Callie said quietly after Meredith and she had closed the car doors.  
"Really bad. I hated those people." Meredith nodded "My mom was a great mom compared to those people. Those women were way too involved in their kids' lives."  
"Way way way too involved. Have you seen this Gloria person?" Callie laughed "She asked whether walnut cookies contained nuts! That's… um…"  
„nuts!" Meredith giggled.  
"Yeah, nuts… Your pager…" Callie said and handed over Meredith's pager to her.  
"Crap! Why are they paging me?" Meredith wondered.  
"You can go and find out I can handle the kids." Callie offered.  
"Three kids? I'm jealous, I can hardly handle two. Thanks!"

* * *

It was late in the evening when April went on her final round of the day "I thought about it. Dr. Yang talked to me. You can do the procedure." The patient's mother shook Cristina's hand. April was surprised to see her.  
"Cristina?" April looked at both of them.  
"Oh, yes, she was very understanding." The mother nodded "Thank you"  
"Have you thought about what you want to donate?" Cristina wondered and showed April the chart.  
"He'd give everything." The mother said.  
"Alright. I'll tell my attending and we'll do the rest." Cristina nodded "I can assure you that the interns won't be in the room. They won't be allowed to watch; they won't be anywhere near your son."

* * *

"Why are you looking like that O'Malley?" Bailey looked up from her cup of coffee.  
"Those interns suck" he said  
"you weren't easy either" she noted.  
"but we were us, you were blessed to have us" George said.  
"You cut L-VADS, you drowned, sept with attendings, each other, each other while married, to get you to where you are today, wasn't a piece of cake either. Man up O'Malley"

* * *

Twenty-four hours later they had completed the necessary hours. April had monitored the patient and Alex was planning to pick up the kid. "Okay, Ms. Thomas, I'll do the last checks now and I'll give you a couple of minutes to say goodbye before I start. So I'll be back." He said and closed the door behind himself.  
Five minutes later he came back to check on the mother "Alright, are you finished? Or do you need some more time."  
"It's okay." She nodded with tear-filled eyes.  
"We can give you the opportunity to see him after the retrieval." Alex offered.  
"Thank you, Dr. Karev." She nodded.

Derek walked into the room and looked at Alex "You paged?"  
"Yeah, he was declared brain dead and I think he isn't. He showed signs of reactions during the caloric reflex test." Alex told him.  
"Who signed her chart?" Derek wondered.  
"Your sister."  
"Who did the tests?"  
"Dr. Kepner."  
"Alright, let's see." Derek looked through the chart "The EEG shows no activity."  
"Yeah, and so suggests every other test, except this one. he's not dead. I have to call UNOS." Alex demonstrated her reaction.  
"You do. " Derek nodded "and you have to talk to the mother"

* * *

"I'm not on call" Meredith looked at James  
"Well with the harvest going on next door you were the only resident available. Patient is in bay 4. Ruptured spleen after an accident. Check him before you take him to surgery. You'll do it." James insisted. "Bailey told me to page you"  
"Alone?" Meredith wondered.  
"Yes, alone. You have done this before." James told her.  
"What if I need help?" Meredith looked at him. An hour ago she had been surrounded by kids and now she'd perform a procedure like this on her own.  
"Pick an intern and page an attending." He suggested "and please beware, he's grabber."

* * *

Lexie saw April in the resident locker room.  
"You forgot a simple test. That's like forgetting the ABCs of trauma" Lexie said "Instead of trying to kiss my boyfriend maybe you should just try to be a better doctor."  
"Shut up! I'm above you. You are a 4th year."  
"Don't talk to me like that, you genius just missed that a patient you thought was brain dead wasn't." Lexie yelled.  
"Oh, did Jackson come and tell you?" April mocked her.  
"He's my boyfriend. We talk about things like this" Lexie said "But Alex paged Dr. Shepherd and I'm on his service, he didn't need to tell me."  
"He's my soulmate. We should be talking about this." April yelled.  
"Well, I'm with him. I love him. Get over it!"  
"Not as much as I do." April said quietly.  
"Don't make me feel bad." Lexie rolled her eyes and walked away. "Stay away from him"  
"You don't get to decide that"

* * *

Alex looked across the waiting room. There were people everywhere, but the woman he was looking for had lost all hope.  
"Is it over? Can I see my son?" she looked at him.  
"We didn't get started, but yes you can see him." Alex nodded "He's still in the room. Dr. Kepner thought he was brain dead, but he found evidence that he isn't."  
"that's good, he's alive, he'll wake up" she said hesitantly.  
"no, sorry, he won't. He's in something we call PVS." Alex sighed "Permanent vegetative state. I'll leave you with him now and I'll call a social worker"

* * *

After she had completed the surgery, Meredith waited for her patient to wake up. While examining him and checking if the bleeding had stopped, he suddenly touched her boobs. He had done it before and his daughter immediately apologized. "He's a creep"  
"No, it's fine, but I think …" Meredith paused and asked the man to follow her pen with his eyes "Do you give me the permission to take you to CT?"

Fourty minutes later the CT pictures popped up on a screen. "Crap, I was right. Celine, can you page someone from neuro for me? I need a consult." Meredith sighed.  
"You called for a consult?" Derek walked in with a smug smile on his face "Can't get away from neuro, can we?"  
"I have a patient here. He came following a head on collision. Splenectomy. Post op CT looked fine, no bleeding, no hematoma, but he has a grabbing reflex, so I ordered this."  
"Dr. Grey." Derek smiled "Looks like we'll be in the OR together again"  
"Dr. Shepherd, just because I chose General doesn't mean I don't choose you. I love you, but I don't love neuro. It's something I really like now, but we don't have a future, it's nothing I want to do. "  
"Want in on the surgery? Looks like an interesting case." Derek said "You used to love those cases"  
"No." Meredith bit her tongue. He wasn't supposed to know and while Amelia was away, she couldn't do a neuro procedure.  
"Come on. We haven't been on a date in a while and maybe you will realize that you just can't live without it."  
"This isn't a date, Derek. Page Lexie, she wants to specialize in neuro." Meredith suggested "and Jackson keeps assigning her to the wrong services"  
"Meredith, I really need someone I can talk to." Derek told her "I know someone who is sleeping with a person he shouldn't sleep with."  
"I know about Owen and Amelia." Meredith looked at Derek  
"Owen and Amelia? Amelia slept with Owen again?"  
"Who were you talking about?" Meredith looked surprised  
"Mark and Lexie."  
"Mark is not sleeping with Lexie."  
"But he did." Derek said "and he wants to"

* * *

"He looks sick. Worse than Sebastian did" the mother of April's PVS patient told the intern that was monitoring the condition of Cristina's patient.  
"he would have gotten your son's heart." The intern said. "Perfect match"  
"What if I don't want to keep him alive? He has good organs." The mother suggested. "I mean I want him to be alive, but not if it doesn't mean that he's living a life."  
"The brain stem is intact; we can't withdraw care." The intern said.  
"But it's futile. You said that he won't get better." The mother said.  
"He doesn't meet the criteria."  
"How long does he have?" she wondered.  
"Depending on the level of care 5 to 10 years -easily. Probably longer. I'm very sorry."  
"I know you want to do the surgery. I know it's special and I know you all want to be a part of it. So, please, book an OR, pull the plug, make sure he meets the criteria." The woman begged the intern.

* * *

When Cristina walked into the room, she saw one of the interns looking at the machines that kept the patient alive "She asked me to pull the plug" the intern said. It was her first week and she was looking at that machine like Izzie had looked at the LVAD.  
"and you won't do it." Cristina told her.  
"But she wants her son to be the donor and your kid needs the heart" she said "It's a waste."  
"And he'll get one, from someone who is actually dead." Cristina insisted "I thought surgery was everything – for a very long time I thought it was – but it's not. It's not about the OR, it's not about the instruments or the thrill – it's about every single life and … what the hell are you doing?"  
"I'm helping her…" the intern starred at her while she held one of the cables.  
"You are cutting an LVAD wire, get out…" Cristina approached the intern and tried to reattach the cable, but all alarms had gone off.  
"Cristina what the…?" Teddy came in and looked at Cristina who was holding one of the cable.  
"This isn't what it looks like… " Cristina insisted.  
"Get out… " Teddy yelled. When Cristina was at the door Teddy added "Prep the patient and get those forms signed"  
"But… " Cristina stopped.  
"There's not much we can do now, go." Teddy said. "Have someone call UNOS, there will be organs that need transport"

* * *

Meredith looked at the results of the blood work. Miss Parker's FSH had returned too normal.  
FSH was usually produced in pituitary gland, but this time it had been a lump in her pancreas that had produced FSH. A very rare tumour -and very hard to diagnose.  
"What is this?" Amelia wondered.  
"Your pituitary gland patient." Meredith said "Our patient."  
"the lump in her pancreas produced the FSH. It's a rare tumour." Meredith said "I'm not bragging, but I removed it"  
"You found it?" Amy wondered.  
"Yeah!" Meredith smiled "We got it out. - and I'm getting out of here, Alex said he needed help"

* * *

"What are we doing here?" the intern looked at Jackson  
"sewing him up"  
"He's dead." The intern insisted "I'm a surgeon"  
"Yes, he's dead and you are going to make sure he looks nice when his mother is coming in here." Jackson nodded "You are going to sew him up. Cutting a patient open is easy, dealing with everything else isn't."  
"I didn't mean to…" he admitted.  
"You should have thought about that before you said those things in front of the family." Jackson reminded him "There are things you can't take back."  
"How do you do every day?" the guy looked at him "I mean there's one almost dead and a dead kid here -and all because some idiot ran a red light." He swallowed.  
"And he'll wake up tomorrow -and they won't." Jackson nodded "It sucks and it's not fair, but there's nothing you and I can do about it. If you thought this job was easy, it isn't."  
"I just thought I'd be good at it, but then I was so excited about this surgery because it's amazing that I forgot what it meant -what it meant to the parents."  
"What it means to the patient" Jackson added.

* * *

When Alex got home, he picked up the mail from the floor and saw the big envelope. Washington State had sent the big letter which meant that Amber's application must have been successful. "Are you okay?" Meredith wondered.  
"Yeah, I think I am" Alex nodded and put the envelope on the kitchen table.  
"What about Amber?" Meredith wondered.  
"I think she's doing fine without me." He smiled. "It's the big letter. Maybe I should just cut her some slack."

* * *

"What are you doing here?" George wondered and looked at Jackson who was covered in a pile of paper.  
"I have some ideas." He said.  
"It looks like the interns are supposed to discuss their own assignments." George laughed.  
"At the moment it is. Yeah. I didn't know what I wanted to do before the merger -and then there was Dr. Sloan and boom – I was a part of the plastic posse."  
"That's really a thing?"  
"Totally. Anyway, I think everyone should have the opportunity to work with any attending. Which means they'll switch the specialty every day for two weeks." Jackson said "And I'll assign them based on the feedback I received from everyone."  
"Mom wants me to move on, she says I should take the next step in my life."  
"She wants you to propose?" Jackson smiled.  
"I guess, I mean Anna is better now, we got through that. -and that ring is still sitting in that drawer." George said "We had sex last night and that's what I want for the rest of my life"

* * *

"I hate responsibility. Those interns sucks. It sucks I lost Hillman – Bailey stole her from me. She was good, she had a brain." Meredith mumbled.

"Worst interns ever" George nodded.

"Mine almost screwed up a central line." Alex complained.

"Mine …" April rolled her eyes. Her intern had intentionally killed an almost brain dead patient.

"At least you get to practice medicine, all I do is spend time in my office or in the skills lab teaching those idiots." Jackson sighed.

"5th year sucks. At least I will be back in the OR next week. " Cristina tried to focus on the bright side.

"Absolutely!"

"So you and Sanders had „the talk"?" Alex teased Meredith.

"No. We did talk, but we didn't have the talk."

"You two really slept with each other? I mean I remember the rumours." Jackson wondered "But there are lots of rumours and…"

"He isn't that good looking?" Meredith giggled "Yeah, bad mistake and the reason mom left MassGen."

"She went to Hopkins because she didn't want you to have sex?" Cristina wondered.

"No, because she didn't want to see me half naked in on call rooms and she didn't want me to ruin his career." Meredith corrected her.

"Sounds very motherly to me." George concluded.

"Very motherly!" April nodded.

"Why are we discussing my teenage love life here, don't you have patients and interns to babysit?" Meredith looked around "And don't you have interns to teach a lesson to?"  
"Is he good?" Alex wondered.  
"Shut up Alex."  
"What are you doing in his office anyway?" April wondered. "People are talking"  
"He's signing off on my surgeries." Meredith said.

* * *

 _What happens when the gloves come off and you stop hiding behind your mask? What's your next move? Do you take your best shot and see where it lands? Or do you hang back, wait a minute, and see if you get sucker punched? It's your move. You can either retreat or go out swinging, so whatcha gonna do?_

* * *

"Nice to see you in my OR again, Dr. Grey. It must have been a while since our last surgery." Derek greeted Meredith.  
"I'm happy you are happy." Meredith smiled.  
"So if you are looking at this brain," Derek tried to explain.  
"Don't even try it, Derek. I'm not on withdrawal." Meredith insisted. It was true. She had looked at a brain almost every day ever since her agreement with Dr. Sanders had been put into place.  
"You are a lot faster than the other Dr Shepherd..." Dr. Hillman blared out. Meredith looked at her like they had just been caught and Derek had indeed caught on.  
"I'm surprised you know how fast Amelia is, Dr. Hillman, I thought you were scrubbing in with Meredith." He smirked.  
"Well, your sister took her under her wings when I was in the lab." Meredith lied.


	55. Chapter 55

_Down to the final nine chapters... I hope you really enjoy this one because in Meredith's last year of residency things are going to heat up and they won't calm down... Derek is still unaware that she's training to be a neurosurgeon (or isn't he?)... Amelia finally opens up about her past..._

 _Thanks to everyone for the reviews and the birthday wishes =) This is the first of a few chapters that will be part of a bigger story arc. Let's see what the future has in store... nobody knows where they might end up (or with whom ;) )_

* * *

 **Chapter 55**

 _Infections have a nasty way of sneaking up on you. You're feeling pretty good, you think the infection is gone, and then, it reappears, out of nowhere. When your body's still weak, when you're barely recovered, BAM! You're infected all over again. And once the infection spreads, once it gets into your bloodstream, well, then you really have to watch it, cause that's the kind of infection that can kill you._

* * *

 _"If I'm sleeping don't wake me up unless the patient is actually dying."_ Lexie looked at the ceiling and thought of Cristina's words. Now she was the one that got woken up by interns every second night. They had just started and they were like Bambi. She missed the sound of Jackson's snoring. It was too quiet to sleep and when the door opened she couldn't believe what she saw: Mark and a nurse making out on the lower bunk of her bed. She closed her eyes and prayed to God they wouldn't notice her. "Ahhh!" the woman moaned while Lexie still wondered if she could ever get those sounds out of her head. Twenty minutes into what was a steamy on call room date, her pager moved. She had left it on the table and for some reason Mark thought it was his and grabbed it. The nurse got dressed and left. Lexie sat up and looked at Mark's pager. Five minutes later Mark came back into the on call room  
"You should have said something" Mark told her and gave her back his pager "I guess this is yours."  
"Do they still need me?" Lexie wondered.  
"I wouldn't be up here if they did."  
"Alright, I'll go back to sleep." Lexie said "Even though I can't really sleep…"  
"…without the snoring. I know." Mark smirked. "I could sleep on the lower bunk if that's okay."  
"Yeah, I guess that would help."

* * *

It was early in the morning when Meredith sneaked through the kitchen into the bed after a long night at the hospital.  
"I don't ever see you" Derek mumbled. "we are working at the same hospital; but I'm in surgery, or you are in surgery"  
"are you trying to get me into neuro again?" Meredith smiled.  
"I'll get Zola and Chris ready" Amelia said. They had car pooled.  
"maybe, I want to spend as much time with you and maybe it wasn't a coincident that you had to perform an emergency craniotomy in New York." Derek suggested.  
"I don't want us to be department head and resident, Derek." Meredith reminded him "Working together is what got our marriage in trouble in the first place"  
"next year you aren't a resident anymore" Derek smirked "or you could work with Amelia." Amelia who had just returned to the kitchen with Christopher and Meredith exchanged a look.  
"She has a resident" Meredith said while her pager started moving. "Derek, you are still going to be my boss. I want you to be my husband. I have to go, Richard woke up. "

* * *

"When I get there the dying Patient better not be there when I get there." Cristina's words echoed through Lexie's mind after one of her interns woke her up at 6.30 am. When Lexie got to where she was supposed to go, her heart stopped.  
"What are you doing? What is this?" she looked at Jackson who was holding red roses and had turned the entire resident locker room into a candle lit room with draped textiles that made it look like an oriental tent.  
"Shhhussshhh, be quiet. Don't say anything." He said and got down on his knees. He was wearing a tuxedo and carrying a bouquet of roses.  
"Is this what I think it is?" Lexie asked him before he could say anything.  
"Will you shut up for a second?" he asked and Lexie got really excited. This was the kind of proposal every little girl had dreamed of.  
"Roses? Seriously? Violinists? What are you doing?" Lexie smiled.  
"I know I'm not good at this. My mom isn't that kind of person. So I'm more nervous than I ever was in my life and oh, I don't know how to tell you, but I love you. I love you, Alexandra Caroline Grey, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"  
Lexie just smiled and looked at Jackson. After a long night this had been the most perfect proposal she could have thought of.  
"Say something Lexie. Are you going to marry me?" Jackson asked again "Do…"  
Jackson stopped and looked at her. She was still smiling, but didn't say a word. "Oh my god I'm such an idiot…. I shouldn't have…"  
"Jackson, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, yes." Lexie got down and kissed him "This is the sweetest thing anyone ever did for me! Yes! I want to marry you!"

* * *

Cristina and her intern sat in a room with a panel of doctors Dr. Sanders had chosen to investigate what had happened to their PVS patient two weeks ago. After Amelia had confirmed that the patient's state had been irreversible based on the CT scans. "Is there anything you want to say?" Dr. Hunt looked at Cristina.  
"You think there's no one you can't save! That's arrogant! All Dr. Richmond did was pull the plug on a patient that was technically alive, but only that. He saved five other patients." Cristina insisted.  
"He didn't have the right to decide that and neither do you." Owen told her.  
"It's good one of us has a moral compass." Cristina snarked.

* * *

Before visiting Richard, Meredith got paged to the prep room. Alex stood there and tried to find a diagnosis for his patient. The symptoms were inconclusive. "What's that? An enlarged lymph node?" she looked at him.  
"No, just a hard mass near her lower jaw. Skin looks fine, no pain when he's chewing, no fall, no injuries, no inflammation, healthy child. Blood analysis came back clean. I really don't know what's wrong with him and his parents aren't not too happy about all the tests they have to pay for." He sighed.  
"Are you taking her for an x-ray?" she wondered.  
"Yeah, orthopantomography like you get at the dentist" his intern smiled.  
They both turned around and rolled their eyes. "Anyway, page me, if this turns into neuro" she smiled. "Amelia has been looking for something like this for ages."

* * *

Mark and Matthew Sanders sat in the Chief's office. Interns going wild, was something that had to be discussed. "She wants to quit? She's working with Yang one week and she wants to quit?" Sloan asked "That's why I don't work with interns"  
"Honestly Sloan, I'd fire her." Sanders admitted "She pulled the plug and injected oxygen into..."  
"Stevens didn't get fired." Mark remembered and her case had been a lot more fatal.  
"Stevens?" Sanders wondered as he had no clue what Sloan was talking about.  
"Izzie Stevens. She cut an LVAD to get a heart for her patient. Mer's friend." Mark said "The file should be somewhere around him"  
"and Dr. Webber kept it under wraps" Sanders nodded. "He didn't want to ruin her career."

* * *

George and April sat on the roof. It was a slow day and not too many trauma patients were coming in. "What's this?" April wondered when George pulled a jewel case out of his pocket.  
"A ring." He smiled. It was a platinum ring with a 12 carat solitaire diamond.  
"It's beautiful." April smiled at him.  
"But it's here and I meant to ask her for so long and I love her too much for her to say no." George said "I just feel like she'll say no"  
"And I'm sitting here wondering if I'll ever meet the one." April told him "You never know what's going to happen"  
"I'm sure he's right around the corner." George tried to cheer April up while tears filled her ears.  
"I just always felt like… I don't know… you think you…" she burst out into tears "I always wanted to be perfect and now I keep thinking that if we had sex, he'd be interested in me and not marry her. But I want to be a virgin when I get married and… God… he would…"  
"God doesn't care about that April" George tried to calm her down "and now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. The right guy will accept you like you are"

* * *

"Okay, listen up everybody" Alex said when he walked into the lab room. "I'm going to do something really rare for a surgeon. I'll ask you for help"  
"X ray back black dot there." One of them guessed "LANGERHANS cells tumour"  
"granulomas isn't consistent with no pain" Alex said.  
"Have you done a CT?" one of them asked  
"Yeah, it looks like that" he said and put a picture on the wall showing a huge bone.  
"Have you done a biopsy?" another girl wondered "It might be a tumour?"  
"That's what we were thinking" Alex nodded "Why don't we go and find out?"

* * *

Cristina and her intern sat in front of Sander's office. "Why do you quit?" she wondered.  
"I don't want to get fired and I can't do this. I did what I thought was right."  
"But you overstepped because you thought you knew better. I get that." Cristina nodded.  
"How can you be so nonchalant about this?"  
"I learned, I studied, I swallowed my pride, I overstepped and got pushed back, but I never let it rest." Cristina summarized "I knew what I was working for the whole time."  
"Till your good gets better and your better best." The intern nodded "Something my mom used to tell me."  
"A friend cut an LVAD wire to save her patient. You are not the first person who overstepped." Cristina said "You are here to learn -and it gets easier."  
"It does?"  
"Well, you learn to deal with those things. You shouldn't run away." Cristina smiled "I don't like teaching interns and most of you are useless for the first few months, but…"  
"Why are you doing this?" the intern wondered "You treated me like crap since I started.  
"Someone told me I was cold and incapable of teaching, I'm trying to prove them wrong." Cristina said. "So if you think I'm a good teacher, you don't quit"  
"What if I don't think you are a good teacher?"

* * *

Another day, another tragedy at the ER. "18-year-old male" the EMT yelled "we found him on the street after a neighbour called the ambulance"  
James made the first checks and noticed that he needed a trauma surgeon and a neuro surgeon in the trauma room as fast as possible. His reflexes didn't seem great and with the shape he was in, they were running out of time.  
"Page neuro" he told one of the nurses. "911 – I want an attending, not a resident – and tell them to prep an OR."  
"We'll need to question him" a police officer interrupted him.  
"you can question him if there's anyone to be questioned" James said "You'll have to wait here because his injuries are life threatening"  
"We have to believe that he got beaten up by a drug dealer" the policemen insisted. "Can't you wake him?"  
"No, I can't because…" he paused and noticed that his pupils were blown "Get me a craniotomy kit and get him out"  
"I'll check for an ID" one of the ER interns said "and notify the family"  
"What's his name?" James wondered.  
"Ethan. Ethan Rhimes."  
"Alright Ethan, you are safe here and we'll do everything to save you. Hang on buddy."  
"Do you realize that kid might be a drug dealer?" the intern wondered.  
"Why? Because he was found in a shady neighbourhood or because he's black?" James wondered "This patient came into my OR, so it's my responsibility to save him"

* * *

Mark was still unaware of Lexie's engagement when he paged her for the surgery. She was still ecstatic. "Myofibrom benign tumour of the connective tissue" had been written in the file by Alex, but Mark wanted to cut and thought it was a good opportunity to show what kind of hot shot he really was. During the surgery he changed his mind when he saw that Lexie's glove had been compromised.  
"Dr. Grey, please step away from the table." He told her when he saw her engagement ring through the hole in her glove.  
"Why?" Lexie wondered as she was still unaware of what had happened. He looked at the finger "Honestly you try to throw me out of your OR because I got engaged?"  
"No. That's not the reason." He insisted.  
"What is it?" Lexie wondered and handed over the clamps to another resident.  
"You can't be serious? You are wearing a ring in my OR and it popped your glove." Mark told her "I didn't expect behaviour like this from you. Get out and don't come back."

* * *

Meredith smiled when she walked into Richard's room "Hey, you woke up." She greeted him. He didn't look healthy, but he looked healthier than before "Dr. Sanders is going to check on you soon."  
"It's been a while" he nodded.  
"We've been worried." Meredith sat down on a chair next to him "Adele has been asking for you."  
"You talked to Adele?" he wondered.  
"I visited her in Roseridge." Meredith nodded. She had gone over to the nursing home a few times since she had found out that she was Richard's medical proxy.  
"Thank you."  
"You trusted me with your medical decisions." Meredith reminded him.  
"She asked for me." Richard smiled  
"When she was lucid, yes." Meredith nodded and told him more about what she had talked to Adele about "You cared for her a lot."  
"I did. She was safe. She was forgiving and…" he paused. She had always supported him.  
"You loved her." Meredith insisted.  
"She was safe." He said "She wouldn't ever leave me. She wouldn't ever hurt me."  
"-and my mother wasn't. She wouldn't have made you happy. Deep down we both know that" Meredith nodded "She stayed with you when things got hard and…"  
"Can you bring her here?" Richard wondered. "I haven't seen her and I want to see her"  
"I think I can ask for that."  
"thank you." Richard smiled "I want to see her one last time"  
"You are not going to die" Meredith insisted.  
"It's the surge Meredith" Richard insisted.  
"No it's not"

* * *

After Ethan had been brought to the neurosurgical intensive care unit, Amelia and James finally found a minute to catch their breath. It had been intense. They still seemed so familiar and comfortable around each other. "That was pretty hot" Amelia smiled when James and she found themselves alone in a trauma room.  
"I learned from the best" he smiled. It had been a flawless craniotomy and he had saved the patient's life for now.  
"Who was that?" Amelia wondered.  
"You. You used to practice it and you talked about it a lot and I read your papers." He remembered all the occasions he had watched her in the skills lab. She had worked harder than anybody he knew.  
"For a minute I thought you were talking about my brother" Amelia smiled.  
"He's not nearly as cute as you are." James joked. He looked at her with caring eyes.  
"You are a great doctor" Amelia complimented him. "and I'll tell a resident to keep tabs on him"

* * *

"Why are you doing this to her?" Jackson walked into the OR with his mouth covered and his hands washed. "I can't scrub in on a surgery you just kicked my fiancée off."  
"Dr. Avery, I don't think this is up for discussion. I expect a professional conduct in my OR and I'm not going to discuss this with you." The plastic surgeon insisted. He certainly wasn't going to discuss Lexie Grey with Jackson. "So take that retractor and shut up"  
"Are you in love with her? You are acting like you are in love with her." Jackson asked.  
"Dr. Avery, you are overstepping more boundaries than I can even count right now. Get out of my OR." Mark said calmly.  
"Dr. Sloan." Jackson started, but soon realized that there were a lot of eyes on him and that this OR wasn't the place for a discussion like this.  
"Avery, get out now and page Dr. Grey, she can come back if she wants to." Mark smiled "but tell her to take off that god damn ring."

* * *

Bailey paged and Meredith ran through the hospital as fast as she could. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up. I already hate you, that's not going to change. It had though. "Is he okay? Did he code?" Meredith ran to Richard's room.  
"Just come see" Bailey sighed and took her arm around Meredith's shoulder.  
"He's fine." Meredith smiled and looked at Adele and Richard.  
"No, it's-it's not." Bailey handed over Richard's blood work results to her  
"But, uh, right now, He's really, really enjoying it" Meredith looked at the chart "so You think it's the surge."  
"Mm. It-it might be." Bailey nodded.  
"I don't. I don't think it is." Meredith said in disbelief.  
"What's the surge?" Bailey's intern wondered.

"In many terminally ill patients, they have a final surge of energy. They get better before they get worse." Meredith explained.  
"But this is not that." The intern added.  
"But in a little while, he'll do what all patients do. He'll have epiphanies, he'll tell you what really matters in life, ask for his family." Bailey said "You might want to call his daughter"  
"It's not a not a surge." Meredith insisted  
"It's time to call Maggie" Bailey hugged Meredith "She deserves this chance"

* * *

Mark and Derek sat at a lunch table. The perks of being a department head was a lighter schedule and regular lunch hours.  
"You let her go" Derek reminded Mark.  
"I wanted to give her time, I thought she wasn't ready and I thought I wasn't ready" he sighed "but now she is ready and I'm ready, but she's not with me and that sucks"  
"you kicked her out of your OR." Derek looked at Mark.  
"Her glove popped because she didn't take of the ring" Mark said "You would have kicked her out too"  
"She told me she didn't want you to see it."  
"A blind person would have seen that rock." Mark laughed "So she came to you?"  
"Yeah, she's my resident" Derek nodded "If you love her, you got to tell her. Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids."  
"Wouldn't it be weird if we end up with sisters?" Mark looked at his best friend.  
"She deserves to know and you deserve to be happy."

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Amelia looked at Alex' sister "You are not supposed to be here."  
"How is he?" Amber looked at Amelia. She knew she looked guilty, but that was because she felt guilty. Ethan was in this position because of her. "You are a doctor, right?"  
"I can't tell you" Amelia said.  
"But he's going to be fine, won't he?" Amber looked at Amelia.  
"I can't tell you either." Amelia said. "You have to go or do you know how it happened? In that case, the police probably want to talk to you."  
"I don't know. Can I stay here? I won't go inside." Amber asked "I'll stay on this side"  
"Fine." Amelia rolled her eyes "If I see you inside his room, I'll call security"

* * *

"Thanks for picking me up." Alex smiled when Meredith waited for him in the police station  
"You got arrested!" Meredith cursed "For F*** sake"  
"No, they brought me in for questioning. I didn't do it. I was in the OR when it happened." Alex said "Amber's boyfriend was beaten up"  
"You didn't? Amber seems to think it was you who…" Meredith told Alex "His mother said you threatened him before"  
"I was in surgery all night, Mer. I wanted to punch him when I saw what he did to her, but I didn't. He was beaten up in a shady neighbourhood who knows what he was doing in that part of town." Alex told her.  
"What was he doing there?" Meredith wondered.  
"That's what they asked me. I don't have a clue what she has been doing all summer and I don't know that kid" Alex said.  
"Jackson proposed."

* * *

They had discussed Jackson's proposal and now the topic of their conversation shifted. "What about the proposal you planned for Anna, George?" Owen looked at one of his students.  
"It's never the right time, I want it to be special." George said.  
"It's always the right time, if she's the right girl." Owen smiled  
"We had our first fight and she didn't scream and shout, she was reasonable… way too reasonable… I just wonder if she really loves me. She had this great love and he died and they are like –frozen in time- together." George sighed "How can you compete with that?"  
"But you love her – if she says yes, it means that you are the one living soul she can picture having a life with." Owen insisted "Retractor, please"  
"I wish Izzie was still here, she'd know what to do." George sighed.

* * *

After Mark and Lexie had removed the tumour and had prepared the wound for a skin graft, they scrubbed out "Thanks, uh, for today. For-for letting me, uh" Lexie thanked Mark.  
"You did a good job in there, but Lexie, you are not half the doctor you could be because all the love drama you put yourself in." Mark told her "If you want to get married, get married! Get married and be happy! But I don't think you'll be happy because you are not in love with Jackson Avery! You slept with me… last months."  
Lexie looked at Mark and started crying "You okay?" Mark wondered.  
"Don't look at me like that?" she begged.  
"Are you okay?" Mark looked at her with concern.  
"I'm not okay and do you know why I'm not okay? Because I love you." She hushed "Oh, god, oh, my god. That just came fly-flying out of my face like it was s-s-some kind of I-I l I love you. I just god. Did it again. I I-I-I-I love you. I-I do. I just I-I love you. And I have been trying not to say it. I have been trying so hard to just mash it down and ignore it and not say it. And Jackson is a great guy. He-he is, and he he's gorgeous, and-and he's younger than you, and he doesn't have any kids or-or is living in another state with his BFF'S ex-wife and he's an Avery, and-and he likes me, you know? He really likes me."  
She reached into her pocket and pulled out that ring  
The door to the scrub room opened and both of them looked at Addison "Hey, Lexie." Derek's ex-wife greeted her and looked at Mark "I thought you said the lobby."  
"I'll be there in a minute." He told her.  
"What I'm saying is, if you feel that way I feel about you, even a hundred times less, you tell me. Because it's still more than I love anyone else. I know it's weird and stalkerish because we've never been together, but if you want me, now is the time to speak up" Lexie told him.  
"You got engaged" Mark looked at her.  
"and you slept with that God damn nurse yesterday morning" Lexie yelled "If you love me, this is your last chance"  
"I thought I had an opportunity at the wedding" Mark joked.  
"Not funny and you are not invited." Lexie said and stormed off with tear filled eyes.

* * *

„wedding magazines? Thinking about a do over?" Derek wondered. Zola was wearing a veil and Meredith was going through a bunch of different bridal magazines.  
"I liked our wedding. The photos suggest we had a great time." She giggled "They are Lexie's. She bought them. All of them! I think she got a copy of every issue of every magazine printed since the early 1990s. It's weird, you'd think someone with a photographic memory doesn't need them."  
"Why doesn't she want Jackson to see them?" Derek wondered.  
"I don't know. She gave them to me today!" Meredith said "Well, maybe it's a little weird that he proposed and she bought all of them today"  
"I have a surprise for her tomorrow!" Derek smiled "Her first solo surgery all by herself! Feels like yesterday that you performed yours! You even do them in open field these days."  
"That was a coincidence."  
"Was it?" He looked at her "You'd be a good neurosurgeon…"  
"Derek, I know." She smiled. She was a good neurosurgeon, but he didn't know she actually was.  
"Be with Lexie tomorrow." He smiled "Pretend to be a neuro resident for a day."

* * *

Mark ran to the lobby "Addison, what are you doing here?"  
"Relax Mark, I'm here for a case. Dr. Sanders called me. Maria is looking forward to spend time with you. And by the way, what was this thing with you and little Grey?" Addison looked at him.  
"What do you mean?" Mark wondered.  
"That little scene where she confessed her love to you…" Addison reminded him "I thought Sanders said your protégé proposed."  
"He did." Mark nodded.  
"Engaged people usually don't confess their love to anyone else" Addison reminded him.  
"Married people usually don't sleep with anyone else or …" Mark said bitterly. "… or people in a relationship usually don't. How is Jake?"

* * *

The next morning

"So I'm a week out of law school - Uh-huh. - First big interview, huge firm. I've never had a better interview. So I stand up to shake hands, and I pass out Right over the coffee table." A young bubbly girl told Derek, Meredith and Lexie during the last check before the surgery "Draped over the coffee table with my butt in the air. - And your skirt - My skirt rides up to my waist. Not even good panties. Granny panties."  
"Ooh. Wow. - Mm-hmm." Lexie giggled.  
"Did you get the job?" Meredith wondered.  
"No."  
"Well, your next interview will end much better once we remove the cyst." Derek promised her "We're going to perform what we call a marsupialization of the cyst. We open up the wall of the cyst so that it can drain freely and then the fluid won't collect. So your dizzy spells will stop."  
"But you said you found a tumour." The patient looked at him  
"Mm-hmm. We did. It's a small one. It's called a meningioma." Meredith nodded "It's benign, so we're going to leave it alone."  
"If it ever does cause a problem, it's easy enough to remove." Derek promised and put his hand on Lexie's shoulder "Dr. Grey could do it."  
"Oh, go, girl." Her patient said and raised her arm for a fist bump.  
"But the cyst is in the temporal lobe. That's what's causing the seizures and the dizziness. We're going to go after that." Lexie said.

* * *

One patient after another. Triage. Stick to the people that need help the most. This one did, but Hunt and George were in OR 6. "It's a cop" April nodded when another ambulance pulled up" Jackson, get him into trauma one and prep for an exploratory…"  
"Get him into the OR" Jackson insisted. "He needs an OR"  
"We don't have time for that" April insisted "I know what I'm doing. It's a GSW, I've done this a hundred times"  
"Alright, you are the lead." Jackson told her "You can do this, just tell me what to do"

* * *

Three surgeons followed one patient to the OR "So this is it?" the girl looked at all of them.  
"This is it. We will see you when it is all over." Lexie nodded.  
"Thank you." The patient said while Meredith approached them.  
"Ah, Dr. Grey. So glad you could join us." Derek smiled.  
"I've been kidnapped." Meredith mumbled and looked at Amelia.  
"She misses me." Derek winked at Amy.  
"I doubt it" Lexie mumbled "She's not even on neuro anymore."  
"Well, she's thinking about coming back." Derek told them and both Amelia and Meredith turned their heads.  
"I don't have to." Meredith mumbled.  
"She is. She's remembering the magic"

* * *

"he died because I wanted pot or oxy or whatever I was taking that night" Amber sat on a bench in front of Ethan's room. "I shouldn't be an EMT, I shouldn't go to …"  
"Shut up, you are not the first person to screw up" Amelia sat down next to her "You are Amber, aren't you?"  
"Yes" she nodded "But what would you know about it? You are a doctor"  
"I know more than you might think." Amelia admitted "What are you thinking about?"  
"I don't know." Amber said with tear filled eyes.  
"Don't know or won't say?"  
"He's dead and I'm still here and…" Amber cried "he tried to stop me, he went to my dealer and told him to stop selling me something. What about you?"  
"I'm not thinking about anything. And that's good." Amelia smiled.  
"Want some?" Amber showed her a brown paper bag.  
"No thanks!"  
"Why don't you drink?"  
"I do. Really. I'm an alcoholic. And I used to do oxy." Amelia admitted.  
"Wow."  
"It doesn't end there. I fell in love, I thought, with an addict. Mm. I don't know why I said "I thought." I mean I do. It's because I'm not sure anymore if I was actually in love with him, but to say that I wasn't feels cold, because he's gone." Amelia said softly and told Amber about a night that had happened shortly before she had started college "I woke up from this amazing high to find him dead. And it didn't feel fair when I found out I was pregnant. This baby -our baby- helped me stay clean. Maybe it would've gotten him clean and we could've… I don't know about being in love with him because that time in my life the drugs I lived it, but it doesn't feel like my life."  
"You loved him -I loved Ethan." Amber looked at Amelia.  
"We were sober together for, like, five minutes." Amelia sighed thinking about Ryan.  
"If it felt like love, then it was. Don't let the perspective you have now diminish the feelings you had then. That wouldn't be fair" Amber insisted.  
"I thought I was the one to give you advise." Amelia looked to the ground and smiled.  
"What happened to the baby?" Amber wondered.  
"I put him up for adoption. Have you ever been in love?"  
"Couple times. Not counting Channing Tatum."  
"What happened?" Amelia wondered.  
"With Channing? Mm-hmm. ".  
"Amber. The first time I got sober, I was about your age. And I just 'because I slipped, it doesn't mean that I'm a screw up and just because you slipped doesn't mean that you can't become an EMT or a doctor. I became a doctor, and I've saved a lot of lives, and I am going to save more if I stay clean" Amelia said "And if you stay clean, you can do and be anything you want, Alright? You're beautiful. Inside and out, you are beautiful. You are smart and you are capable and you can do and be whatever you want and I'll help. Okay? I'm your family now, and I will help. Call me when you need someone."  
"You don't know me"  
"I do. You babysat my niece, you are living in one house with my brother's sister in law and you are an addict" Amelia said softly "I know what it's like to feel like that"

* * *

Candles, roses, romantic music. Everything was supposed to be perfect this time. No quick wedding in Vegas, something traditional. "Oh my God, George, why do you do this now?" Anna looked at George and tears started streaming down her face.  
"What's the matter?" he wondered.  
"I... I got this amazing offer. It's in DC…" she mumbled.  
"and you accepted." George got back up from his knees.  
"Yeah, I was going to tell you tonight." Anna sighed.  
"Good luck." George said and left the apartment. Anna stood in a sea of candles. The whole apartment was covered in roses and candles and Anna was alone.  
"George, I loved you" she screamed and George halted on the doorstep "I really did, but I have to do my thing and you do your thing. You stay you and I am I. And maybe in the end we meet again."

* * *

"How is she?" James whispered into Amelia's ear when he saw her looking at Amber  
"Amber? She's still in front of his room." Amelia sighed  
"So you and Hunt were a thing?" James smirked.  
"A mistake… I don't really… it was a mistake –" she sighed "and oh that moment when… I want to forget about that… it was a mistake… one I'll never make again. We were… it was all about passion and desire and the forbidden. He was in a relationship and I was… we were… I don't know what we were. But we weren't good for each other."  
"I don't know what we are." James told her "You never answered my question."  
"I'm not ready for all those things." Amelia said and pulled James's ring out of her pocket "I'm not someone who has figured their life out. I think you should have this back."  
James nodded and took the ring back "I heard you went to your brother to get me fired."  
"Yeah. Didn't work out." Amelia laughed "I slipped. I left Baltimore and checked into a rehab facility."  
"I ... you could have…" James paused.  
"No, you couldn't have." Amelia said "It all got too much and if a proposal feels like that, I guess that's your answer. If you don't feel like you want to run off to Vegas, it's a no"

* * *

When the finally stabilized the patient, both Jackson and April were ecstatic. They had saved him and two nurses were bringing him to the ICU. He was stable and would be able to survive the night. "You were amazing." Jackson complimented her.  
"We were amazing" April moved closer to him "-together."  
The ended up in an uncomfortable hug. Both of them wanted more. Both of them knew it was inappropriate.  
"I like Lexie's ring" April smiled.  
"It's my mom's"

* * *

"And there we Are. Great" Lexie mumbled as she moved a piece of skull into a metal bowl.  
"That's a perfect craniotomy. Right, Dr. Grey?" Derek looked at Meredith with a smug smirk on his face  
"You dragged me back into neuro to watch Lexie do a boring procedure?" Meredith wondered.  
"He dragged us into the OR to watch this, but I'll go now..." Amelia said and left.  
"Hey, it is not boring." Lexie insisted.  
"- It is not boring. It's her first solo cyst. Be a big sister. Cheer her on." Derek smiled.  
The phone rang and one of the OR nurses answered "Shepherd, I've got a motorcycle cop open on the table with a C-7 fracture. I need your eyes on the cord. Can you –" she said, but he cut her off.  
"All right. I'll be right there." He nodded and started to give Lexie and Meredith instructions "When you, um, marsupialize that, make sure that you –"  
"Tack the edges." Meredith nodded.  
"Yes, I know." Lexie sighed.  
"- Okay. - Right." Derek said "She knows what she's doing. Just observe. I'll be right back. If you need anything"  
"We won't. Go." Meredith smiled.

* * *

Alex sat down next to Amber after Amelia had paged him. Her eyes were read "Alex, he was there because of me. He's dead because of me." She cried "I've abused oxy and he tried to stop me. He tried to tell my dealer to stop selling stuff to me -and now he's dead. I need you to check me into a rehab facility."  
"I thought you were doing great." He told her.  
"I thought I was doing great. But the drugs just made it so much easier." She said "I killed him."  
He hugged her "You didn't."  
"He's dead because of me. Please take me to a clinic." She cried.  
"Alright."  
"It's not your fault, Alex, you know that, right?" Amber whispered.  
Alex looked at her and whispered "You didn't mean to -and now come – I'll take you somewhere"

* * *

 _You know that thing, that terrible thing, you thought you had laid to rest? What if you didn't? You know that thing you think you finally figured out? What if you haven't? When do you know you've put something to bed? When is it finally safe to move on? Maybe you never know. Maybe you just have to test the water. You have to see how it feels. And if it feels good, I mean really good, then, hell, I say go for it._

* * *

"The cyst is draining really well." Lexie smiled.  
"Really well. Great job." Meredith who had watched her sister smiled.  
"Whoa. Where is that blood coming from?" Lexie wondered.  
"It's all right. It's just a little bleeding. We just have to find the source. Let's extend the craniotomy a little." Meredith suggested calmly.  
"Open her up more?"  
"Yeah. It's okay. Just a little."  
Lexie grabbed the drill and extended the craniotomy. "Here you go, doctor." She smiled when she was finished.  
"Take all the time you need." Meredith tried to calm her down  
"Like that?" Lexie wondered "Uh-huh. There it is. Little bleeder."  
"Just cauterize." Meredith tried to walk her through the surgery.  
"Okay. Look at that." Lexie pointed to another part of her brain.  
"That's her tumour." Meredith nodded.  
"What? Oh, my God. There it is. Do we take it out?" Lexie looked at Meredith "Uh, we should, um"  
Meredith sighed. Stick to your surgical plan. Nr. 1 rule of the fifth year of residency "Let's call O.R.2 and find out how long Dr. Shepherd's going to be before you do anything" she insisted.  
"I mean, he said it would be easy. That I-I could do it." Lexie tried to persuade her.  
"I know, and it's right there, but he isn't here" Meredith looked at her.  
"They said he's just finishing. He'll be here any minute." The nurse smiled.  
"Okay. All right. Well, let's just wait and see what he says." Meredith smiled while Lexie did something.  
"Okay. Are you sure? I mean it's right there, I just have to cut this one time, and see there, it's out" she said and Meredith starred at the tumour.


	56. Chapter 56

Down to the final seven chapters... sort of excited to finish this and give everyone a proper ending...

Thank you to everyone for your reviews! I'm glad that you are enjoying the story! I enjoy every single comment.  
Susan: this might not feel like it yet, but the outcome will be different (after all Derek is not the only Shepherd who has stakes here). Romantically they are still going very strong (because Derek doesn't have a clue what's going on in his own department).  
Melanie: No, I don't feel like the story needs a sequel, I have another story in mind that I want to get into though.  
Shelley: Fellowships will come up soon... Meredith is going to have a very awkward job interview all of you can look forward to.  
Rita: Oh, I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Hope you got to drink a "Alt" in Düsseldorf ;)

* * *

 **Chapter 56**

 _There's no such thing as magic, as far as we know. And while as surgeons, we study the secrets behind the human body's intricate network of cells, tissues and organs. When things go wrong, horribly, horribly wrong, there are only so many tricks we have up our sleeves to put a body back together. But there is a kind of power, more of a spell really, and when we get it right, it can be pretty damn magical._

* * *

"We are great together" Jackson nodded and April leaned over and kissed him. She whispered "So great"  
"Hold on, hold on" Jackson interrupted the kiss "This has to stop, we have to stop"  
"But I want you" April begged and looked at his lips.  
"April, I'm engaged" he insisted "and I can't look at you. This isn't supposed to happen"  
"What if this means something?" April wondered and tried to kiss him again.  
Suddenly the door opened and Mark looked at them "Wow, Avery."  
"Dr. Sloan, this is not what it looks like!" Jackson insisted and raised his index finger.  
"It looks like you and April were kissing" Mark said and walked in.  
"In that case is was exactly what it looked like" April muttered.  
"April!" Jackson looked at April. "We saved a patient"  
"So this is what you do, when you save a patient nowadays?" Mark smirked while April exited the room quickly "you make out with the other doctor on the case. Man these are the days to be alive."  
" It didn't mean anything" Jackson insisted.  
"You look like it felt good" Mark teased him  
"It did" Jackson nodded "and then it didn't"

* * *

Matthew Sanders walked into Richard's room "Hello Dr. Webber."  
"Dr. Sanders, how are you doing?" Richard looked up from his bed.  
"I start to like my work. The residents are great and the attendings are very dedicated. But I'm here because of you. We got the tumour out." He said "It's gone, but…"  
"But I'm too weak and I noticed my liver…" Richard started.  
"Yes, you need a transplant, yeah." Sanders nodded  
"It's the waiting game." Richard said "Except, I don't really have time. I don't have family and I haven't been sober long enough to be eligible for a transplant. Dr. Sanders, after so many years on the job, I know when a patient is worth saving and I'm not."  
"Dr. Grey tried a lot here." Sanders reminded him.  
"I know." Richard nodded. "She doesn't give up."

* * *

When Derek returned to the OR, they had already cleaned up "There you are. What are you doing here?" he looked around.  
"We're finished." Lexie said "The cyst is draining. And get this I resected the meningioma Perfect margins."  
"You did what?" he looked at her in disbelief.  
"Took the tumour out. That's why I paged you" Meredith looked at Derek.  
"Why the hell would you do that? The plan was to remove the cyst. - She did not consent to that surgery." Derek yelled at both of them "Are you out of your mind? Did you encourage her to do it, Meredith?"  
"No, she did not, she tried to stop me, but the tumour was right there." Lexie looked at Derek "Are we supposed to close her up and put her through another brain surgery?"  
"You should've paged me at least." He said.  
"I did, twice. And I told her not to do it." Meredith reminded him "and I paged Amelia. All of you were in surgery"

While Lexie brought the patient to the neuro ICU, Derek and Meredith talked in the scrub room "Derek, Lori is fine." Meredith insisted. "Lexie took her to recovery. Her vitals are great"  
"We won't know how she is until she wakes up. I should've known better. You should've known better." He looked at her  
"I told her to stop"  
"Sure you did. Give me the scans, go and find another attending." He told her "I want to know everything that you did in there."

* * *

"Dr. Yang." Matthew Sanders looked at the resident who had just entered his office.  
"I want interns." She said.  
"The last time you've been in here you told me you didn't want to waste your time." Sanders reminded her "Why would this time be any different?"  
"It is different. I want to go back to the basics, I want to make sure none of these idiots pulls the plug on any of my patients again." Cristina said  
"I guess it bothers you that she quit." He said "It's not your fault. Some people just do."  
"A lot." Cristina said "I don't fail and you said if one of them quits, I fail."  
"You surprised me." Sanders said.  
"Why?"  
"You are not the type of person that comes around to do this." He said.  
"You are right, but there's someone and I want to prove something to him, so I'm doing it anyway. Let me show those interns what working in cardio is like." Cristina smiled.  
"Okay, you can take over Dr. Altman's group." He nodded.  
"Thank you!"

* * *

Alex had stayed up all night. He had waited in his car in front of the rehab facility Amber had checked into. He had waited and hoped that he wouldn't get a call that she had been kicked out.  
"Dr. Karev, are you okay?" James looked at Alex and offered a bottle of pop.  
"Why are you asking?" he yawned.  
"Your sister was here yesterday." James said "and you look very tired."  
"Yeah, she was." He nodded "and now she's in rehab"  
"It's not your fault. You don't notice. They have a way of hiding. Amelia did anyway." James said "I know she was an addict and I never noticed"  
"Amelia relapsed?" Alex wondered. He was surprised that Meredith had never talked about it.  
"Yeah, she relapsed and disappeared. I always thought that there was something I could have done better, but there wasn't." he said "And every time you visit her, you have to remind yourself that she has to do it on her own."

* * *

Meredith needed to calm herself down and decided to check on Richard. "Meredith, I want you to know, I…"  
"It's alright Richard, you don't owe me anything." She said. He had noticed that she had tears in her eyes "I'll be fine."  
"I do. That's why I want to share my happiest memory with you." He smiled.  
"Your wedding day?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, Ellis and I were in the resident lounge. Kissing, we had just decided that we were going to leave Seattle. I had the best sex of my life that day." He smiled.  
"Ugh. Gross." Meredith laughed "I didn't need to hear that."  
"I've never been happier than I was that day. We had made a pact. If I could go back to that day I would make everything differently." He smiled and looked at Meredith who had noticed her pager "I get it, you have to go"  
Meredith left the room and dialled a number. "Whatever you might think or feel, you have to come now." She told the other person "If you don't want to lose your chance, board a plane and get here"  
"I'm in the middle of a 16-hour surgery."  
"I wouldn't have called you, but I really think you are running out of time"

* * *

Meredith looked at Cristina who had paged her to the hallway in the basement "Why are there five interns assigned to you?" Meredith looked at her.  
"I'm trying to prove something to Owen" Cristina admitted.  
"Which is…"  
"That I can feel empathetic to someone"  
"Why are you hiding here?" Meredith sat down next to her.  
"It's not going well" she said and handed a small part of her doughnut to Meredith "you?"  
"Lexie removed a tumour from a woman today, even though I told her not to and now Derek's all worried that we gorged her." Meredith sighed.  
"Mm. Did you?"  
"No. I hope she didn't." Meredith sighed "I wouldn't have done it like that. Going through Broca is tricky"  
"Well, I've spent the entire morning with Shepherd's little sister. I can't look at brains anymore. I miss hearts." She sighed. "It's part of why I want to have these interns. They get me back to cardio"  
"I miss talking to Derek about neuro. I mean me and Amelia are doing all those really really amazing procedures. She's a goddess! I can't talk to him about it" Meredith sighed "I should tell him."  
"Don't cave!" Cristina said  
"He asked me to come back" Meredith smiled. "He begged me."  
"He doesn't know, does he?" Cristina wondered.  
"I don't think he does." Meredith sighed "but he paged me, so I got to go"

* * *

Derek was waiting in front of Lori's room when Meredith arrived "Where is Lexie?" he wondered.  
"I told her to go wait for the labs. It's going to be fine." Meredith tried to appease him.  
They walked in and saw an older woman next to Lori "Oh, God, honey. We're Lori's parents. We were in Rome. We just got here." She greeted them  
"I'm Dr. Shepherd. This is Dr. Grey." Derek introduced them while Lexie walked in.  
"How is she?" her father wondered.  
"Lori's surgery went very well. Her vitals are excellent." Lexie smiled "Dr. Grey, pleased to meet you"  
"We won't know more until she comes out of the anaesthesia." Derek corrected her.

Thirty minutes later Meredith noticed that she was coming out of anesthesia "Oh, she's starting to come around. Hey, Lori. How are you doing? Hmm? Let me look at you, okay? Well, responses are good."  
"Follow this for me. Up. Down." Derek started to examine her.  
"How you feeling'? Honey, we're right here."her mom smiled.  
"Hi."Lori mumbled.  
"Oh, that's a good sign." Lexie smiled.  
"Hi, sweetheart." Her mum kissed her.  
"Wh Whu Whu wro Wh Whu " Lorrie muttered and Meredith and Derek exchanged a look.  
"It's called aphasia." Meredith said "The part of the brain that helps control how she forms words was damaged in the surgery. There is a chance, with therapy, that she will regain some of her function."  
"Some? What the hell did you do to her?" her father yelled.  
"Mr. Bosson I am sorry. I had the best intentions. It was an outcome that I did not foresee. I'm sorry. I made a mistake." Derek said  
"We're suing you. She's 27 years old. You ruined her life."  
Lori was crying and her mother tried to calm her down. "Honey, stop. Lori can hear you."

* * *

"And your waiting room is clear. Nicely done." Owen complimented April.  
"Ah, sorry to interrupt." James looked at the two of them.  
"Do you need something?" April wondered. James was holding to cups of coffee and handed one over to her.  
"Kinda. I've been watching you for two days. You don't seem to slow down. I thought you might need a break. Maybe grab a cup of coffee?" he offered her the vanilla latte. "Probably shouldn't have started with the whole "Watching you" thing, huh? Now you think I'm some sort of creeper. I'm not. Unless you're inclined to have coffee with creepers, in which case, I totally creep, like, all the time"  
April starred at him and didn't say a word "You are confused" he smiled softly.  
"I just diagnosed a patient" April bragged "lesions, some idiot said she had a fungal infection, but it was a heart tumour."  
"That idiot was me." James looked at her chart "You look confused. I'm "  
"I know- and you haven't talked to me" April looked at him "and I'm not confused, I'm brilliant and anyone who can't see that, can go and … himself".  
"Christian upbringing" James smirked.  
"How do you know?" she looked at him.  
"You left out the four letter word" He laughed "Do you want to have dinner?"  
"You are asking me out?" April wondered.  
"Yes, that's what the question usually entails." He nodded  
"I have a surgery now, but I can make it tonight."

* * *

Meredith and Derek sat on a lunch table. "It was my mistake." Derek told her.  
"You weren't even in the room. I should have" Meredith tried to interrupt him.  
"My mistake was leaving you two in there alone… you are a resident and you will be a general surgeon. It was my fault. I can't believe you would do this." He sighed. "I thought I had trained her better."  
"I thought, if you had seen the tumour and I told her to wait for you" Meredith looked at him  
"You didn't think at all." He bit his lips.  
"Okay, it's my fault." Meredith insisted "I should have known better. Let's just let it be my fault. This will kill Lexie. It'll destroy her confidence- Does she even have to know?"  
"Of course she does." Derek yelled. "You are going to talk to her"  
"She's not strong enough." Meredith insisted.  
"Then she shouldn't be a surgeon and you were probably right, you are not cut out to be a neurosurgeon." He sat and got up. Meredith stayed at the table. He hadn't know anything, yet he had told her that she didn't have what it takes -and he hadn't been the first one either.

* * *

Owen and Cristina were standing in the ER together. "Sanders assigned all of the interns to you?" Owen wondered while he went through the new assignments.  
"Yes, I volunteered. They finished their rotation and I'm supposed to introduce four of them to cardio. Teddy chose them." Cristina said "I'm trying here"  
"Is this about what I said?" Owen looked at her.  
"Oh, of course. Everything I do is about you"Cristina rolled her eyes. "It's not, but… Just because I'm the one who said it was time doesn't mean this is easier for me."  
"I know." Owen nodded "and I'm inspired by what you are trying to do."  
"This is not easy for me."

* * *

Meredith had summoned Lexie into a meeting room. It was her responsibility to discuss the procedure with her resident "When you took out the tumour, you damaged Broca's area. So she can understand speech and she knows what she wants to say, but she can't say it." Meredith showed Lexie something-  
"Okay, well, just tell me that he can fix it" Lexie begged "Tell me that I haven't ruined her life. Derek can fix this, right?"  
"He can't. It's irreparable." Meredith bit her lip. She had to be professional now.  
"What do you mean?" Lexie wondered  
"I mean she's not going to be able to talk?" Meredith clarified.  
"She's 27. She He ha he has to fix it. I mean, there ha there has to be something."  
"There isn't. You should have thought about that before, but I mean, this is my fault, too." Meredith sighed "I shouldn't have let you do it."  
"You tried to talk me out of it. Oh, God. Oh, my God. She" Lexie looked at the chart "I it it it it it was right there. And I mean, I-I-I never would've done it if You saw it."  
Meredith saw tears in Lexie's eyes. "You're not going to cry right now. You're going to go and talk to Derek. And he is going to be pissed and disappointed and he's going to scream at you and he won't look at you for days. Just take it. And you'll move on and you'll learn from this and you will never make this mistake again." When Lexie had left, Meredith started to cry.

* * *

"Anna is leaving tonight" George said "I feel like I should be doing something, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do"  
"Shouldn't you be with her?" Owen wondered.  
"She left me." George sighed "We had this life and then she took her daughter and decided to move across the country. I don't know how I'm supposed to tell my mom. How did you tell your mom about Cristina?"  
"Oh, we don't talk" Owen sighed.  
"You don't talk to her?" George wondered incredulously.  
"I call her." He said "I call her, alright. I call my mother, once a week. I haven't told her I'm back, she thinks I'm calling from ... I keep the conversation short because I can't bear for her to know that the son she sent off to war is gone. He's gone."  
There was a pause when both of them were walking on the patient before Owen continued "And if I just got in my car and drove the six miles to see her, she'd be so ... sad. And she would look at me in the same way she does, now. Like I'm not there. The only time I don't feel like a ghost is when SHE looked at me, because when she looks at me, she sees me. She sees me. This is me. This is me."  
He looked up to the gallery where Amelia was standing. "I don't have to say a word. She just looks at me and sees who I am and how I feel and accepts it. She doesn't try to change it or wants to change it. That person. There's a billion people but I imagine there's only one of her."  
"So you still believe that you can end up with Cristina?" George wondered.  
"I do believe in second chances O'Malley, but I had feelings for Amelia."he insisted "I just wish she wouldn't have walked out on me. I feel like I should have stopped her."

* * *

"Crap! Crap! Crap!" Lexie sat on the bench in front of her locker.  
"Bad day? Ugh." Mark who had walked passed the room wondered.  
"Bad week, bad months, bad year, bad life. Have your pick." She said with tears in her eyes "I don't know why I keep doing this. I want to be happy and I keep making it complicated."  
"I have to go, I can't be that person for you anymore." Mark said "I'll let Jackson know you are here" He left Lexie on her own and she cried.

Five minutes later Jackson came into the room. "Are you okay Lex?" Jackson sat down next to her and kissed her forehead.  
"Yeah, sure, I'm fine" she tried to wipe away her tears "I am, sorry you find me like this."  
"It's okay Lexie. It's okay." He hugged her.  
"I gorged a patient" she said "This girl -she's as old as I am- and she'll have to live with this for the rest of her life. Do you know what that is like?"  
"No, but it happens to all of us at some stage" Jackson said "We just have to live with the fact that we screw up other people's lives."  
"You still love me?"  
"I love you."  
"I'm glad we can talk about things like this" Lexie smiled.  
"Yeah, we do" Jackson sighed. He couldn't tell her about his problem with Sloan though.

* * *

Meredith had cried in a supply closet for thirty minutes before she walked into Amelia's room. "I quit neuro. I'm not cut out to be a neurosurgeon." Meredith told Amelia.  
"Meredith, who said that?" Amelia looked at her. She had worked with Meredith and was sure that this has been an assessment that hadn't been done by Meredith.  
"I did. Lexie gorged this patient and – I think it's my fault. I should have told her not to do what she did." Meredith said.  
"My brother" Amelia rolled her eyes "My brother is an idiot. You of all people should know that. He said it, didn't he?"  
"He's right Amelia. He left Lexie with me." Meredith sat down next to Amelia and showed her the file.  
"He wanted you to watch, for Christ's sake, he wanted you to be around because you are her sister." Amelia said "He thinks that you are general resident. He shouldn't even have left you to on your own. He doesn't know you were supposed to be able to be a proper supervisor."  
"But I wasn't. -and this is my consequence." Meredith sighed and tried to think of something positive "I'm home earlier, I get to spend more time with the kids, and you don't have to lie to your boss anymore. Everybody wins."

* * *

"Don't leave! Wait!" George yelled and a few other passengers turned their heads. Anna held Sophie's hand.  
"I told you not to come here." She walked to him. "What are you doing here?"  
"What's George doing here, mommy?" Sophie looked at Anna.  
"Why do you have to make it so hard?" Anna looked at George and bit her lips like she was about to cry.  
"Because I love you and I meant every single word I said." George told her "I mean, I bought a ticket to get here and if I have to, I have four hours to persuade you to give me a chance."  
"George I'm sorry, we really have to go." Anna said.  
"Please. Hear me out!" he begged.  
"What are you doing here?" Anna began to cry.  
"I'm asking you to stay. I love you and I love Sofia. You shouldn't have to choose between the people you love, so I'm begging you to stay." He said "I'll have finished my residency in 10 months, I can move to DC."  
"I told you not to come here! Why do you have to make it hard?" she cried "I mean, don't get on this plane."  
"Because I love you and I meant every single word I said." He gave her a tissue. "I want you to have that ring and you can take your time and get better. Figure out what you want and give me an answer when you are sure."  
"George. I just want to leave Seattle behind…" she said "I mean, every bad thing that ever happened to me, happened here. I'm sorry. I have to go. I'll call you."  
"Does this mean you are saying yes?"  
"This means that I'll tell you when I'm in DC." Anna said.  
"Good luck." He hugged her "and have a safe flight, little girl."

* * *

Amelia walked into the resident lounge. She wanted to cry, but she saw Owen."You've been gone. I was looking for you." He smiled.  
"Yeah, early surgery and then, I had something to go to." She mumbled trying to fight her tears.  
"Are you sober?" he looked at her with genuine concern.  
"Are you asking because Cristina said something?" she wondered "I'm fine… the boot, my second boot… I just lost it. I'm living in a trailer and…"  
"Are you sober?" he wondered again. He was amazed by the rambling mess in front of her.  
"Of course I am." Amelia said. Why wouldn't she, she thought to herself.  
"Did you disclose your recovery when you were hired?" he wondered  
"I didn't have to! Derek hired me. He knew. I assumed people knew." She said. She didn't have a clue why he was asking.  
"And you've done nothing wrong. Okay? And you are under no obligation to tell anyone anything more, unless you've done something to compromise your ability to do your job, and you haven't." he smiled "You don't have to be a mess. So you don't need to say anything more about it. Okay. Those are your rights. It's the past, and you don't have to defend it."  
"I thought I got away from it. Coming here, I thought I thought I had a chance to." She sighed "But you never get away from it."  
"No. No, you don't." he nodded.  
"What do I do now?" she wondered. "Meredith quit my service. She just walked out on me. Derek said something and she walked out on me."  
"You just stay on track. You look after yourself, do your job." Owen advised "And as soon as you can, you need to get to a meeting."  
"I just came here from one." Amelia admitted "I had to talk to someone."  
"You can stay with me tonight. We could hire a movie and drink some…" he realized he wanted to say wine, but that was out of question"sparkling water."  
"Yeah, that'd be nice." She said "I might take you up on that"

* * *

April stood in the hallway. She looked outside and noticed she had to go back to the resident lounge, she turned around and ran into James "You changed your mind?" he smiled.  
"No, I didn't. Actually, I was going to grab my umbrella because it's raining." She stuttered and pointed to the parking lot.  
"when it's raining, it's pouring." He whispered "I can wait."  
"Oh, screw it." She smiled "Let's go out there and sing, sing as loud as we can. I'll just hop into the rain. No safety net, let's go."

* * *

It was 6.00 pm and Cristina's first chance to scare her interns to death. She had gotten rid of all of her previous interns and residents, but this time it was supposed to be different. "I have three rules. One listen to the nurses. Respect the nurses. Do whatever the nurses say. You may think you know more than the nurses. You do not. This is the night shift, if something goes sour, they are your only help" she said and handed over cardio protocols to them. "Two, your life is now all about me. Not about you or your boyfriend - Your fight with your sister - Or your nasty little rash down there. So, when we are focused on me, we are learning to be surgical gods. When we are focused on you, we're working at a gas station." She smirked and looked at them. Neither of them dared to say anything.  
"Three no complaining. You complain and you are out. Got it?" she looked at them and pointed at a guy who had appeared to be more confident before she had started talking "You. Rules. Repeat."  
"Listen to nurses, worship you, complain and die." he mumbled.  
"I'll familiarize you with the most common post op tasks and that's what you'll do until an attending decides to take a pity on your non-hardcore asses. I won't be easy on you, but if you stick around we can be sure that you have what it takes." She smiled "Welcome to cardio."

* * *

James and April ended up in a diner in the harbour area. Every restaurant they had tried before that, had been overbooked, so now they sat in a low key diner and enjoyed a milkshake. "So you seem lost" April said "and you realize, I… I want to be okay."  
"Oh, I'd love to be okay." James smiled. "I'm not looking for anything. I just wanted to talk to somebody and you seemed nice. I proposed – and she left- she never came back. I took a new job. End of story."  
"You don't look like that's the end of the story." April giggled and moved her straw in her shake.  
He sighed and nodded. "One month before I proposed she met my parents. She said she wanted to go back to work when we have kids. Not that we ever talked about that-"  
"I used to want that. Have a husband who comes home to me every evening, look after the kids." April smiled.  
"Surgery is a full time job." He said.  
"That's why I changed my mind." She nodded "I mean I'm 29 and I have never loved anyone yet, well I do love Jackson. I love Jackson as a friend and I love my family."  
While she said it, James looked at his pager "I'm sorry."  
"Oh, you are not going alone." April said and put down the money for the two drinks.  
"I can't let you pay" James told her.  
"Or you'll take me out on another date." April smiled. "A proper one."  
"So this has been a date" he smiled "I might do that"

* * *

Meredith came into Richard's room where she found Mark and Richard talking. "I'm glad you came Meredith. I have a few things to tell you." The former Chief greeted her.  
"what's the matter? Mark?" she looked at Mark.  
"Mark and I were talking about something before you came." He said "Sit down. I want to tell the two of you something. Ellis was my soul mate. We had an immediate connection."  
"I was drawn to her in a way I never experienced before…" Sloan nodded thinking about somebody with the same last name.  
"You were?" Meredith and Richard smirked.  
"No, sorry, you were." Mark said pointing at Richard. He got up and excused himself "It was nice talking to you, Chief."  
Meredith wanted to say something to Richard, but he interrupted her "Don't fight me on this, Meredith, your mother was my soul mate. Don't fight me on this. That's why Adele and I never fully worked out, this is why she divorced your father. We had an immediate connection and over time you begin to wonder whether there had ever been anybody that you felt like this about before."  
"It's so complex and strong." Meredith nodded.  
"and deep. I wanted to call her, I wanted to talk to her -and I didn't for 20 years. We could have had a lifetime, a happily ever after."  
"Most people don't, Richard." Meredith sighed.  
"Yeah, but I've seen you and Derek." He smiled "He's the love of your life"  
"Why would Derek and I be any different?" Meredith looked at him.  
"You just are. I'm glad I got to see you again." He said "You look like your mother and you have her talent."  
"How do you imagine it to be like when you die? I mean… do you believe in the afterlife?" Meredith wondered. "I mean, you summon everyone here and share your wisdom and…"  
"I think she'll be there, waiting for me. I want her to be there. I've waited too long." He said "and if I'm there we can all the things we never got to do."  
"Richard, don't go. I called Maggie…" Meredith said.  
"Meredith, thank you" he smiled and closed his eyes "I'll see her again."  
Meredith looked at the monitor. His heart had stopped beating "Time of death 8.42 pm". She sat by his side for a while and held his hand. She imagined how Ellis, Richard and her five year old self packed their suitcases, loaded the boot of the car and drove of into the sunset, which was admittedly stupid as Boston was in the east, but Meredith like the image. She imagined how they drove and drove, really fast. Her mother was smiling. And in that moment she swore she felt like they were infinite.

* * *

 _As surgeons we are no stranger to the breaks and tears in the human body, in fact we sacrifice the better part of our twenties learning every possible way to make it a whole again. But there are some wounds a surgeon can't repair. Not on their own. It takes a kind of power we just don't have. There's no such thing as magic, not in the traditional 'abracadabra, genie in a bottle' kind of way. But there is magic in knowing that while not everything can be repaired, almost everything can be survived._

* * *

"I am 407 days sober. I debated whether or not I should say the exact number or just rough it, but I figured, I've earned every day so. I'm doing okay in my second year." Amelia stood in front of an audience of approximately forty people. After Meredith had bailed on her, she needed to talk to someone. Whenever she felt insecure one imagine came back creeping into her head: A dead Ryan when she had been eighteen. She had tried to overdose, but Derek had saved her and now she was here. The baby had helped to keep her sober the first few months, after that it had been medicine that had helped her to stay sane. "I moved in with my brother, his wife and his kids. Been there a couple of months. I'm really trying to make it my home. And I started working out again, which is good, you know and healthy. When my fiancé showed up here, I was calm enough and I didn't turn to drugs or alcohol. I started to mentor a resident. It feels great to be responsible and to see somebody else achieve because you helped them. Year two is a challenge, but I'm ready. And it's all about growth, and I've set myself up to grow"


	57. Chapter 57

_we are on holidays in Portugal right now and as we've had a fairly active day, I'll give you an update on this story before my arms and shoulders get to sore for typing (which isn't an unlikely scenario as we've been in the water with our boards all day)._

 _Thanks for reviewing everyone! I love what you have to say! Sorry for the delay, I just felt like writing a chapter that's still ahead of you.. a wedding... nor a not-wedding or maybe it is a wedding and maybe it isn't (you won't find out until then obviously...)_  
 _So, I hope you enjoy this chapter._

* * *

Chapter 57

 _Say you're in the O.R. repairing a vena cava, when suddenly, everything goes to hell. So you cut this, suture that and soon that crappy situation is a thing of the past. Too bad you can't meet all of life's challenges with a surgical scalpel. I mean, you could try. But I'm pretty sure that'd be considered assault._

* * *

Meredith and Jackson sat in the burn unit. Both of them waited for a patient of theirs to return from imaging. "Sloan is impossible. I'm a 5th year resident and my fiancé gets to do more surgeries than I ever since I proposed." Jackson complained.  
"Mark cares about her. He'll come around again. It might take some time…" Meredith tried to encourage Jackson.  
"It's been three months. I haven't scrubbed in with him once in all this time. He used to call us the plastics posse." Jackson said "I don't think he will"  
"You are up in the burn unit a lot" Meredith looked at him "Don't tell me you are not trying to avoid him"  
"My skin grafts look better than his right now." Jackson said proudly. "The scaring is minimal."  
"I could talk to him."  
"No, that's something I should be doing." Jackson insisted. "What happened to your super-secret assignment?"  
"Derek said something -and he's probably right -and I have the islet cell trial." Meredith admitted.  
"So you quit. You walked out on his sister." Jackson reminded her.  
"I did not, I just chose to focus on general."  
"Lexie's surgery would be on your file if you didn't." Jackson stated "I read her file."  
"Yeah, and she's my sister. I would have done a better job if it had been anyone else at the table. I was too hesitant to step in because…" Meredith nodded.  
"You love her and you don't want to hurt her… but if this is about Lexie -and your professional ambition- you shouldn't step back" he said "If this is hurting your career, you shouldn't be afraid to stand up for yourself, you should do what you feel passionate about."  
"So should you- talk to Mark. Tell him to stop being an ass." Meredith smirked.  
Suddenly Dr. Bailey turned up and looked at both of them "Grey, why are you chatting with Dr. Avery here? We are moving on to bigger animals next weeks."  
"Guinea pigs?" Jackson wondered.  
"Humans, Avery. Humans"  
"You got the permission?" Meredith's face lit up. All those hours had finally paid off. Ellis last idea before the diagnosis and Richard's last discovery before his were finally being tested after hours of documentation on the effects of the device on mice.  
"We get the permission. I'll call up the first candidates" Bailey nodded. "You better clear your schedule"

* * *

April and James sat in the cafeteria. Ever since their first meal, they had discovered that they loved to talk to each other. They had no one at the hospital, April had fallen in love with the one person she was able to talk about something like that and he wasn't in love with her -at least that what she thought, and James hadn't been at the hospital long enough to make friends. "Jackson asked me to be his best man." April said and handed him a coffee.  
"You are a girl." James reminded her.  
"That doesn't mean I can't be his best man. He's my best friend." April said "I get him like nobody else does."  
"What happened to being having feelings for him?" James wondered. "You shouldn't be the best man if you secretly wish the wedding shouldn't happen"  
"That's completely under control." April blushed.

"Don't look at me like that." James smirked.  
"How do I look?" April wondered.  
"Like it's completely not under control. What are you planning to do? Get up at the altar and run off?" James laughed "I can drive the getaway car"  
"No, I just want him to be happy." April said "and if being with Lexie is what makes him happy, I have to let him do that."

* * *

An hour later Meredith was in the middle of surgery, when the phone in the OR rang and a nurse interrupted her "Dr. Grey."  
"What's the matter? Can't you see that the girl is in the middle of a human colon at the minute." She wondered.  
"There's a Dr. Pierce at the reception. She's been asking for you." The nurse stated.  
Meredith looked up. She had called Maggie once a day for the past three weeks. Ever since Richard had died, she had left her a message that his funeral was on the 25th. "Dr. Pierce? Are you sure?" she wondered.  
"Yes, absolutely. " the nurse nodded. Meredith looked at the colon in front of her and estimated that the surgery would be going on for another two to three hours depending on the progress. "Alex, can you take over for me? I'll be there. Tell her I'll be there in a second"  
"Who is Dr. Pierce?" Dr. Hillman wondered.  
"Meredith's sister. The adopted one." Alex said "I'll be down there"  
"Does she?" Dr. Hillman stopped.  
"I'm afraid she doesn't." Alex told her "At least I think she doesn't. Meredith talked to her at the conference for the last time as far as I know."  
"Poor thing, it sucks to never know your father." Jackson sighed.  
"She was adopted. She has a mother and a father." Alex insisted.  
"Where is she from?" Bailey looked at them.  
"Boston. Your grandpa probably knows her and never realized he was working with Ellis Grey's daughter." Alex smirked.  
"You knew about it?" Bailey looked at Alex.  
"Meredith is my friend. She tells me things and she told Maggie to come rather sooner than later if she wanted to meet him." Alex sighed "and now it's too late."  
"She's one of the youngest attendings ever." Jackson added.  
"All the genes- and all you do is look pretty." Alex teased Jackson.  
"Shut up Karev." Jackson shot back  
"Shut up both of you!" Bailey interrupted them "There's a patient on this table."

* * *

Lexie and Jackson sat at the lunch table. They looked at their wedding folder which was in front of them. There were sections for location, ceremony, vendor contacts. Lexie had been very meticulous. Discussing wedding details had been tiring. Due to Jackson's mother their guest list was well over 200 now and their wedding colours had been changed from lavender to gold which as the brand colour of the Avery foundation. Both of them were still looking for suitable venues. Whenever one of them was off, they went location scouting.  
"April liked it. But their only opening in the next year at the weekend is April 28." Jackson showed her pictures "April really loved it. The place has such an amazing atmosphere."  
"Well maybe you should get married to April if you both like it so much." Lexie spat "I won't get married on April 28th!"  
"What's so bad about April 28th?" Jackson looked at her in surprise.  
"My mom died on April 28th" she reminded him.  
"I… I didn't know." He stuttered.  
"Anyway, we should just pick another date. – and probably another venue if this one is so booked up." Lexie smiled.  
"We should hire someone." Jackson said "I mean, we haven't gotten the chance to do this properly due to our schedule  
"Seriously, this is so complicated. How do people find pleasure in wedding planning? All those girls look so happy -and I just think this is stressful and… I hate to think about decorations or sashes or bar menus. It doesn't matter anyway. Nobody remembers weddings…" Lexie laughed.  
"unless something goes horrible wrong." Jackson chuckled.

* * *

After his shift, Alex drove to the rehab clinic. Amber was ready to move back in with him again. She looked fine compared to the day he had dropped her off there.  
"Alright, you can have your old room back -and I paid your tuition, so you can pick courses for the next semester and just move on with your life. There's a list of meetings that Amelia suggested." Alex rambled "and I…"  
"Alex, I'm okay. Thank you." Amber said "I'm not fine yet, but I talked to a lot of people and I'm okay"  
"I'm sorry Amber." He said "I just…"  
"About what?" Amber wanted "I'm the one who should apologize"  
"I wasn't there, I was at college, then at med school and I was an intern and a resident, I was never there for you -and Aaron -and mom." Alex looked at his sister.  
"You did the best you could. It's fine, Alex. You aren't my mom or dad." Amber said "I know you were, but you don't have to be"  
"You know we can talk about anything?" Alex looked at her.  
"Alex, you know we can't talk about anything. But that's fine." Amber said "I'm okay, I mean I went to rehab and I talked about things in therapy, I'm working on my steps. I want to see Ethan's parents."  
"I don't think that's a good idea." Alex said. He felt like she was too fragile to take that step.  
"I have to apologize."  
"I don't like it, but I'll take you." Alex sighed "When do you want me to be there?"  
"3.00 pm tomorrow"

* * *

Lexie and Amelia were standing in the OR. Amelia was furious. By now she had figured out why Meredith had quit her service and decided to go back to general, but at the same time self-doubt had crept up on her because Meredith had quit even though she had begged her not to. She told Lexie to dissect a certain part of the tumour in front of them while she was holding the rest in place. Lexie froze and whispered "I can't do it"  
"You can't do it? Are you serious?" Amelia looked at her in shock.  
"The last time I touched a scalpel I gorged a patient." Lexie whispered.  
"And you'll gorge a whole lot more. You are a surgeon. Those things happen and if you are not strong enough, you should quit. But no, you don't quit, you let somebody else take the blame and bear the consequences." Amelia said. "Get me another intern in here, Grey clearly isn't capable of this."  
"I don't even know what you are talking about. If your freaking resident quit, that's on her." Lexie yelled while Derek walked in.  
"Amelia, what's going on here?" he wondered.  
"Oh, you might want to ask Dr. Grey – and take over for me please, or I'll stab her with a scalpel." Amelia told her brother.  
After they had switch positions, Derek looked at her "Calm down, what's going on?"  
"it's my fault." Amelia said.  
"Why do you think it is?" Derek wondered.  
"She doesn't believe in her abilities and I see her potential and then this other attending told her she'd never make it in our specialty -and she quit -so I think I'm a bad mentor."  
"When Meredith quit neuro, you …" Derek started. Amelia rolled her eyes. If only Derek knew that Meredith was the problem.  
"tried very hard to get her back +plus you are her husband, not her mentor." Amelia said "You aren't responsible for her professional career."  
"I could talk to your resident." Derek offered, but obviously this was out of question.  
"Oh, no thanks, just tell me, I'm a good mentor, am I not?" Amelia wondered "If I am, I have to do this on my own. I can't let you fight my battles for me"  
"You are the best mentor anyone could ask for." Derek smiled.

* * *

Meredith was still wearing scrubs when she found Maggie in the waiting area. "You came. Why didn't you call?" she looked at her.  
"I wasn't going to come, but today when I woke up I had the feeling that I had to get on a plane and fly to Seattle for the funeral." Maggie said "I was actually scheduled for surgery today."  
"I'm sorry."  
"But I never got to meet him." Maggie kept rambling without listening to Meredith's series of never ending apologies.  
"I'm sorry. So sorry".  
"I need a drink, I really need a drink." Maggie said.  
"There's a bar just across the street."  
"You are coming with me." Maggie insisted.  
"I have to work."  
"So have I, and I hopped on a plane to Seattle so you can come and have a drink with me."

* * *

After Amelia had told Lexie to get out of her OR, Lexie needed to calm down. Derek had left a pile of charts for her with instructions for all the pre-op patients. "these three bubble-like spots? Those are your aneurysms." She showed the scans to a woman who was hesitant to go into surgery.  
She didn't seem to be bothered by what Lexie had just told her, but kept typing something on her laptop instead "J-j-just a second. Um, sorry. I didn't hear a word. Say again. Ah. My aneurysms. Horrible things. What are they doing now, growing? Is that why the god-awful headaches?"  
"One has sprung a leak." Lexie nodded and looked at her with a strange sense of fascination.  
"Great. Go ahead. Say it. Say I told you so." The woman told her "He's been warning me about this for years, and I have been avoiding this surgery. Fine. Okay. But it's gonna have to wait until I'm done with my book."  
"Dr. Grey, what are the possible consequences of not fixing a warning leak?" Derek asked when he came into the room.  
"Stroke, haemorrhage, death." Lexie recited.  
"Dr. Grey, what are the possible consequences for a botched clip?" the woman asked.  
"Stroke, haemorrhage, death." Lexie repeated. Brain surgery was risky.  
"So I'm dead, and my book's not finished. I can't do that to my readers. I just need to find a way to get Kate to the bridge where she's supposed to meet Nathan before she's pulled back in time" she sighed "After that, I'm all yours. Justine Yeah, between your voice and my leaky aneurysm"

* * *

"How do I look?" Jackson asked. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a white shirt and a black tie. He couldn't have looked any better.  
"Great Jackson, you look great. Anybody would agree to spend the rest of their lives with you if they saw you in this." April tried to put up a happy face. Seeing Jackson as excited as this for the wedding was killing her, but she had to make sure that he wouldn't notice.  
"It's perfect?"  
"It's perfect. It's the perfect suit – for a wedding." She nodded.  
"You don't sound like it's perfect and I'm not sure about that tie – I think it's too dark. Do you like the tie?"  
"The tie is perfect, Jackson. It's a nice tie. It's not about the tie. The tie is perfect if you want to wear it for a day, but you have to be sure that the tie is something you still want to look at after 50 years of marriage." She rambled. He didn't realize that she wasn't talking about a tie.  
"Maybe I should go with a suit instead of a tux if you don't like the tie."  
"It's not about the tie Jackson!" April screamed "It's about the fact that … I'm here… why didn't you ask George or Alex to come shopping with you. Why did you leave this until the last minute, you are getting married and you waited to buy the suit and the tie and the shoes and whatever else until now?"  
"It's months until we get married" Jackson stated "We are residents, April, and we had to plan a lot of things for the wedding. What is this about?"  
"The fact that you took me suit shopping with you." April said.  
"You are my best man, April!"  
"I shouldn't be." She sighed.  
"Why April?" Jackson looked at her.  
"Because the best man is supposed to want to see the groom get married." April admitted "James was right about that. Seeing you walk down that aisle. It's killing me"  
"You shouldn't be there. If you feel that way, you shouldn't be there." Jackson nodded.

* * *

Alex and Amber had sat in his car for quite some time now. She was staring at the house in a peaceful suburban neighbourhood. "You don't want to go." Alex looked at Amber.  
"I do want to, but I can't. They must hate me." Amber looked at her brother "They must hate me for what happened to their son. To Ethan."  
"And there wouldn't be anything you can do about that." Alex told her "the past is in the past. I love you, you know, no matter what happened, I'll always love you and I might be screwed up, but I'm your brother."  
"Thanks for taking me, but I'll have to do this on my own." Amber said "I can stay outside on my own."  
"I'll wait here." Alex insisted.  
"No, Alex, I know you want to go to that funeral, I can walk. Catch some fresh air." Amber said "in case I chicken out of going to their house."

* * *

Meredith and Maggie sat at Joes and talked about Richard. "What was he like?" Maggie wondered.  
"He was a kind man. Flawed, but kind." Meredith thought. It was the kindest thing she was able to say about him.  
"What was she like?"  
"I hated her as a mother she wasn't really warm and I was alone a lot, but as a surgeon or colleague I think I would have liked her." Meredith sighed and drowned another shot "Why did you come?" This question had been stuck in her head ever since Maggie had arrived.  
"A feeling." Maggie guessed. It seemed she wasn't too sure about it either.  
"You get those?" Meredith smirked. She had acted on a feeling too many times before.  
"Yeah!" Maggie laughed "Like when you arrived in Boston, I usually don't like other residents, but I liked you."  
"Before you knew I was your sister" Meredith laughed and toasted to Maggie "I get them too. Cheers!"

After a while Maggie pulled out a photograph of Zola and Christopher "I have to take new photos with Christopher and Zola".  
"I didn't realize you had old ones." Meredith looked at it. It looked like one of their Christmas shots.  
"Derek emailed them."  
"He never told me." Meredith mumbled. It seemed like she wasn't the only one that was able to keep a secret.  
"He was the one that insisted that I had to come. He wrote me everyday." Maggie said.

* * *

The car ride after the funeral seemed longer than Meredith had hoped it to be. Following an incident at the funeral, neither one knew what to say, they just drove to the ferry and up to the house.  
"There were a lot of people there" Maggie finally broke off the silence.  
"He was the Chief of surgery for ages. But why don't we stop talking about it." Meredith bit her off "I don't want to talk about it."  
"I think I would have like him. And his wife shouldn't have yelled at you" Maggie insisted.  
"She thought I was mom, and she probably thinks it's 1983." Meredith mumbled and looked at Amelia for help, but had to realize that she wouldn't get it from her.  
"Go away Ellis! He's my husband. Why can't you leave us alone?" Amelia imitated Adele "How was your day Meredith?"  
"Calm down everyone." Meredith rolled her eyes. "I'm fine. She has Alzheimer."

* * *

"You've been quiet." Derek looked at his sister and Meredith. They had ignored each other for the better part of dinner and he had tried to keep the conversation going.  
"Well if you can't say anything nice…" Meredith paused and looked at Amelia.  
"I'll just go to my room" Amelia tried to get up.  
"Can we have a word?" Derek looked at both of them.

Maggie watched them argue on the porch. Amelia and Meredith were yelling at each other and Amelia stormed off  
"What's the matter with you?" Derek looked at Meredith. She could tell that he was mad.  
"Your sister is harassing me."  
"Amelia asked how your day was"  
"Well, she shouldn't have. We should go back."

Meredith sat down and mumbled "Sorry".  
"It's fine. I had Zola and Christopher to keep my company." Maggie smiled.  
"How do you like Seattle?" Derek wondered.  
"Oh, the hospital looks great" Maggie smiled.  
"You haven't been anywhere else? What about the space needle or Elliot Bay? Meredith could show you around." Derek offered.  
"Or you talk to Dr. Altman and ask her if I can watch her…"  
"I don't get you girls." Derek interrupted Maggie and looked at his wife.  
"Except you do. Remember when you asked for privileges at Mt. Sinai when we visited your mother?" Meredith teased him.  
"I never pictured you like this." Maggie sighed "I mean we met in Boston, but after I found out… I never imagined you like this."  
"Like what?" Meredith giggled.  
"Like real. And now you are." Maggie smiled  
"and there is the whole other family when you grew up as an only child." Meredith nodded. It wasn't a feeling she was unaccustomed too.

* * *

"Ooh." The woman she had been observing for the past 24h complained about increasing pain.  
"The pain's getting worse?"  
"Does it look like it's getting better?" the author wondered.  
"I know what can really help." Lexie stated confidently.  
"What?"  
"Clipping your aneurysm." Lexie smiled.  
"Cute." The woman rolled her eyes.  
"Look, I'm sure if you call your publishers and you tell them, they'll extend the deadline." Lexie tried to persuade her.  
"It is not about a deadline. It's about my readers out there, who are waiting for me to finish a series that they have been following for ten years." She explained.  
"You're really that popular? Wow."  
"You really know how to kick a girl in the ego, don't you?" the patient laughed. Lexie had never heard of her before.  
"I'm-I'm sorry. We don't get a lot of time to read around here." Lexie explained "Uh, what about your family? I-I mean, I'm-I'm sure that they wouldn't want"  
"Do you see any family sitting with me, Dr. Grey?" she wondered "I'm a writer. My characters are my family, and I care about them. And I've managed to make a lot of other people care about them as well. Yes, I want to give my readers closure. But Kate and Nathan and Alexander, I owe them closure. And I'm the only one who can give it to 'em."  
"I'm just trying to help you." Lexie insisted.  
"You want to help me?"  
"Yeah." Lexie nodded.  
"How fast can you type?"

* * *

While everyone was busy, Cristina had decided to take a step back. They had brought in a family of three. She had stayed behind to look after the girl. "Can I see my mom now?" the girl wondered. Her mother and father were brought in after the stampede.  
"I'm trying to find out." Cristina smiled.  
"Is she gonna be okay?" the girl looked at her.  
"You want an honest answer?" Cristina bit her lip. The girl nodded.  
"I don't know."  
"Do you know anything?" the girl wondered.  
"I hear that you're scared. It's scary when your mom or dad gets hurt and you feel alone." Cristina smiled softly in an effort to cover up her pain.  
"How do you know?"  
"'Cause when I was your age, my dad and I were in a car accident and he was hurt and I was really scared. So I know."  
"Was your dad okay?" the girl wanted to know.  
"Yep, he was fine." Cristina lied. It had been the day she had held a human heart for the first time "Now let's go see about your mother"

* * *

When Christina walked into the OR, she witnessed sheer chaos, one of the crushed victims was suffering from abdominal bleeding that Dr. Bailey was trying to fix, while Teddy and Maggie were trying to fix the tear in the woman's heart. "Scrub in Cristina, it's Misses Hiddleton."  
"Check for a second heart beat" Cristina told one of the nurses "I'll be back in a minute"  
"Oh my God, right, she was pregnant the last time we examined her" Teddy's eyes widened.  
"Pregnant oh my god" Maggie looked at the patient in front of her  
"there's a second heart beat" a resident smiled. Just in that second the woman flat lined. After the last resuscitation attempt, Cristina walked into the OR and looked at everyone. The woman was dead.  
"someone page ob and get an incubator from the NICU" Teddy yelled. "We need to do a C-section"

* * *

 _"Kate couldn't keep it to herself any longer. She took him by the hand and looked deep into those ocean blue eyes. "I have figured out why I travel through time, Nathan." "I have figured it out, and now I know how I can stop it. " Oh, my god. "I can choose where to be, when to be. " - "And I have. I have chosen. " - Oh, my god. Yes. Nathan pulled her into his arms and held on tightly. Kate whispered against his chest, "I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry. " Wait. She'd never know if he heard her. When she opened her eyes, Nathan was gone. She was in Paris. It was time to look for Alexander.""_  
"What? She chooses Alexander? No! No way." Lexie said with her mouth wide open. "It has… it has to be Nathan."  
"It's not Nathan." She smiled.  
"But he's-he's so handsome and good." Lexie insisted.  
"And-and Alexander Is her soul mate." The woman tried to calm Lexie down.  
"He doesn't even have a soul. I mean, he's a criminal" Lexie muttered. "They-they-they don't even want the same things. They make each other miserable."  
"Dr. Grey, I cannot betray my characters You're the writer. You can make them do whatever you want." The patient smiled. "And-and picking Nathan, - that is the right thing to do."  
"- Ohh." Lexie sighed.  
"You hate it." She concluded.  
"No, I-I know. - No, no." Lexie insisted.  
"- You hate it." She nodded and faded out. Lexie checked her vitals and pressed the emergency button. When a nurse arrived, she told her "Okay, page Shepherd. Now. I think her aneurysm blew."

* * *

Maggie ran into the gallery and pushed the speaker on the intercom system. "Maggie?" Meredith and Derek looked at her sister.  
"You have to save him." She insisted.  
"There's a little girl out there and we couldn't save her mother, so please save him. There's her and her baby brother and they need a parent."  
"We are doing our best here." Callie looked up to Maggie.  
"Why don't you scrub in and watch, Dr. Pierce?" Derek wondered.  
"No, I'll go over the procedure with Dr. Altman." Maggie said. "There'll be some paperwork."  
"Shepherd, they need you in OR3, patient is critical." One of the nurses interrupted them.  
"Do you think you can handle it?" Derek looked at both of them.  
"Well, if we can't, we can wait, he's stable." Callie told him.

* * *

When Cristina walked into the waiting area she looked at the little girl and sighed. She'd have to tell her that her mother was dead. "Can you come with me?"  
"Sure" the girl nodded and followed her into one of the meeting rooms.  
"So, there's a hole in the wall?" the girl looked at Cristina.  
"Right, and the blood is supposed to go from one room to another except it's just rushing outside through the hole." Cristina nodded.  
"And it can't get to the brain?" the girl took a card "Got it!"  
"Yes." Cristina nodded "Or to her lungs."  
"So they're gonna sew up the hole?" the girl asked. It had been their plan.  
"They'll try to. But the heart has to be strong, like, um... like nylon. Like your shoes." Cristina sighed "Your mom's heart is weak, like paper."  
"What happens if she dies?" the girl asked.  
"Well, we'll talk about that if it happens." Cristina slapped down on the cards for the card game they're playing "Gotcha! Mine." Sanders was looking at them from behind. Cristina remained in a long pause and looked at the girl "If your mom dies, you'll feel a lot of things. First, you'll feel like, uh, you could have done more to help her, but it's not true. You did everything you could. You won't feel that way, but remember me telling you this. You did everything you could. And it'll hurt every time you think of her. But over time, it will hurt less and less, and eventually, you'll remember her, and... it'll only hurt a little."

* * *

Derek was busy in the OR "Suction. Oh, damn. It's a big bleed." Lexie said after checking the monitor.  
"If you had spent less time taking dictation, we could've avoided this. - Did she at least finish the book?" Derek wondered.  
"No, but she did tell me how it's gonna end. It's so stupid" Lexie ranted "She-she's written this incredible story with these amazing characters, and then she just blows it."  
"Wow. You're 15 right now." Derek smirked.  
"It's criminal, what she's doing. And-and when she wakes up, - I'm gonna tell her that." Lexie insisted.  
"- Or maybe it's none of your business." Derek suggested.  
"It's the same thing that you are doing with these hopeless cases. You know, you think that you can change the way the patient's story is gonna end. And if you think that, then you're at least obligated to try. So I gotta try, right?" Lexie wondered.

* * *

"Where's the little girl?" Sanders looked at Cristina.  
"Uh, Social Services came. We put her to bed in a patient room. Her dad should be here out of the ICU by the time she wakes up." Cristina nodded.  
"Good. You were great with her today." Sanders complimented her.  
"Thanks." Cristina nodded.  
"So, when did your mom die?" he wondered.  
"She didn't." Cristina said with a hint of hurt in her voice.  
"Your dad, then?" he wondered. There was a long moment of silence "I'm sorry if that's, like, too personal. It was just really clear from the way you were talking to her today. It's been a long day. I just thought you might want to talk about it."  
"That's very insightful of you. You're a super, super sensitive man." Cristina mumbled and ranted "You know, let me tell you what you saw today. I reflectively listened to a patient's concerns. I spoke to her in a language she could understand. I clearly stated the possible complications and probable outcomes. That's all you saw today... me kicking patient sensitivity's ass, so go be someone else's dish rag."

* * *

Jackson waited for Lexie in the resident lounge. They had argued about every major decision of the wedding so far. "I called the Arctic Club, pulled some strings. We can get married there in March." Jackson smiled.  
"I… " Lexie was surprised. They had originally thought it was out of their budget.  
"You don't like it?" Jackson wondered.  
"I love it…" Lexie was amazed. "My mom and my sister used to go there for…"  
"your afternoon tea, yeah, Thatcher told me." Jackson nodded.  
"You talked to my dad?" Lexie wondered.  
"Yeah, and I hired a wedding planner. You can bitch and moan to her… she can take it." Jackson chuckled.  
"I love you." Lexie kissed him.

* * *

Alex walked into the living room where Amber was reading one of his books. "Are you okay?" he wondered.  
"Yeah, I'm fine. Here's my 100-day chip. Amelia took me to a meeting. I went up and talked. It felt good, I don't know why it felt so good to open up to strangers." She admitted.  
"What did Ethan's parents say?" Alex wondered.  
"They thought he wanted to buy drugs for himself. They didn't have a clue. And I didn't tell them. We had tea and pie and I lied to them. I felt so awful I had to go to a meeting." Amber sighed.  
"You could come to the hospital, …" Alex offered "If you need to talk to me…"  
"that's where Ethan died." Amber reminded him.  
"A lot of people die there and most of the time there's nothing you can do about it. Those things happen and it sucks, but Amber, you are a good person. You're not nearly as screwed up as I was." Alex laughed.  
"At least you know what you want. I mean, you know who you are and what you want and what's important to you. Me, I'm a mess." Amber insisted. "I don't have anything, or anyone, or even any kind of idea who I am, or what I am doing, or why. And I have done stuff. I have done bad stuff and I don't know what I'm doing anymore."  
"And you'll figure it out."

* * *

"You were good in there." Derek hugged Meredith and whispered into her ear while she scrubbed out. Callie and she had finished the spinal repair on their own.  
"For a general surgeon who is not cut out to be a neurosurgeon." Meredith sighed.  
"No." he looked at her and realized the damage he had done "Has this bothered you?"  
"Oh, your husband questioning your capabilities… why would it?" Meredith coughed.  
"You were flawless Meredith. What I don't get is how?" Derek said "I watched the tape. You never scrubbed in on a procedure like that with me -and you knew what to do. I read the protocol -and you followed every step in the book, you knew when you had to be careful and why.  
"I'm a good surgeon Derek." Meredith smiled softly.  
"I know. But you and Amelia have been a pain in the ass for the last few weeks -and neither one wants to talk to me about it." Derek whispered  
"Well, we'll get over it and so will you." Meredith smiled and disposed her gloves in a medical waste bin.  
"I love you Meredith -and I'm proud of you." Derek kissed her.  
"Thanks."  
"You realize that this surgery is going to be on your record?" he teased her  
"One of many." She smirked.

* * *

George had just closed the door behind himself with the last box when the doorbell rang "Hey neighbour, how are you?" Callie wondered and walked in. He was living right next to her now.  
"Alright, I guess" George sighed "I moved, but she's still here. She didn't say yes and she didn't say no."  
"Schrödinger's cat."  
"We talk once a week, but not about things that matter." George admitted and sat down on his new couch.  
"You're looking at hospitals in DC." Callie noticed when she saw some brochures on the table. "and research fellowships. The NHI offers a few. I was offered one, but declined. You could totally apply for one. What about Sofia?"  
"She's the reason I haven't accepted this one yet." George handed over a letter to her  
"You got an offer for an attending position? That's amazing"  
"It's just a small hospital."  
"and you are stuck here." Callie said  
"My heart is in two places at the same time." George said "It feels like I'm constantly abandoning someone."

* * *

Lexie was waiting by her patient's bedside when the woman woke up "Can you tell me your name?" she asked calmly.  
"Justine Campbell" the author smiled. .  
"And what's today's date?"  
"I never know the date. Ask me something else." The woman laughed.  
"Why can't Kate choose Nathan?" Lexie wondered.  
"She's going to. - I mean; you just feel like you have a moral obligation to wait" the woman stated with a soft smile.  
"really?"Lexie smiled.  
"Yeah. For now, I had a dream while I was under, and I figured out how to stretch the series out two or three more books. So for now, she'll get to see what it feels like to be with Nathan."  
"So what? They're gonna be together for a few books, and then she's gonna choose Alexander?" Lexie looked at her.  
She nodded "Yeah, probably."  
"What is wrong with you? I mean, why do you hate Nathan so much?" Lexie asked.  
"I don't hate Nathan. I love him, probably as much as you apparently do." The woman smirked "He's kind and funny and incredibly honest. It's Kate. She doesn't love him."  
"She should." Lexie insisted.  
"I know. It's not fair." She nodded. "I know. But it makes for a really, really good read."

* * *

"A quick consult Dr. Yang?"  
Before Cristina realized what was going on, she was in a supply closet facing Owen "What are you doing?  
"I realized the reason why I haven't told my mother I'm back is because part of me is still over there. I made a commitment to the army that I wasn't able to fulfil. If my unit hadn't been destroyed. I would still be there. So, no wonder I can't sleep at night, or look my mother in the eye. No wonder you and I, we can't move forward. My work there isn't done." He insisted "Until it is, I have no business being here. So, I've decided to go back."  
"I have to go." Cristina said "and you shouldn't go back."  
"Cristina" Owen tried to hold on to her.  
"What?" she turned around and escaped his grip.  
"Come on."  
"I'm sorry, what am I supposed to say?" Cristina wondered. "We can't move forward because I don't want kids and you do. That's the sole reason!"  
"I could use your support." Owen tried to persuade her. He begged her with his eyes.  
"You don't have it. You can't have it." Cristina said "I told you – I can't be that person for you anymore. Why don't you talk to Amelia about all of this?"

A few feet away, Owen was hiding in a corner and trying to get a peek at Cristina. "You are acting weird around, Yang" Amelia pushed Owen into the open.  
"I'm not going to talk about it" he insisted.  
"I am not like anyone else. 'Take care now'? What is that?" Amelia wondered and looked at him "What are you, like, you're happy now? What... what are you?"  
Dr. Owen Hunt pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Amelia. Amelia read it and looked at him "'Hey there now' 'Take care now' 'Nice work Yang' What is this?"  
"It's, my shrink, my shrink gave me these sentences. We, ah, we came up with them together. They're all 3-word sentence so I could have something to say to her instead of the 3 words that are... that are killing me." He admitted "The 3 words that you know I feel but I can't say them, because it would be cruel to say them, because I am no good for her. I don't wanna torture her. I don't wanna look at her longingly when I know I can't be with her. So, yeah, I'm smiling and I'm saying 'Take care now'. I'm letting her off the hook. I'm trying, I'm trying so hard to let her off the hook. I'm trying to make it right. What I did to her. Can't you see that? I'm just trying to make it right."  
"Take care now." Amelia smiled and handed over the pieces of paper.

* * *

George checked on his 40-year-old patient again. He wanted surgery after being denied oral food, taking medicine to control acid and antibiotics, but as he kept vomiting Meredith and George had concluded that it might be better to wait. They had done an ERCP with Dr. Hillman. She had learned how to go endoscopic through the mouth into stomach until they reach his duodenum and discovered a sphincter because pancreatic fluid and bile end there; "we are going to cut this sphincter, and place a stent into the bile duct so bile takes the normal way because there's less resistance and the fistula will close itself." Dr. Hillman looked at George.  
"So everything is going to heal by itself." The patient smiled.  
"Sometimes it's that way, some things heal on their own." George nodded "You just have to wait."

* * *

It was time for Maggie to fly back to Boston if she didn't want to get fired. Sanders had done her a solid favour and had covered the true intention of her trip by telling her boss that he had requested her for an emergency consult. It was a lie, but a lie that didn't get her fired. On the way to the hospital it was noticeable that the sisters had warmed up to each other again." What about Dr. O'Malley?" Maggie smiled "He seemed… I don't know… like a mess"  
"George, oh, he proposed and his girlfriend told him she's moving to DC. Her mom died and her dad died, and her fiancé died. Everybody is dead." Meredith paused for a moment "I get it. I'd get the hell out of here if I was her."  
"He proposed?" Maggie wondered "And she left"  
"Yeah."  
"And now that ring is in his drawer again." Maggie sighed "and he doesn't know if he should take the leap or not"  
For a moment neither one said anything. Suddenly, shortly before they arrived at the airport Maggie wondered "Mer, why did you quit neuro?"  
"I don't know. It just felt… right… it felt right for a second…" Meredith sighed.  
"so you ran" Maggie concluded "If things get tough, you run."  
"Well, getting on a plane wouldn't have helped because apparently my husband would turn up three months later anyway." Meredith joked. If she hadn't run, they wouldn't have met.

* * *

Alex was twenty minutes late for his dinner. He hurried into the room and suddenly froze. He couldn't move. He looked at a man he hadn't seen in more than ten years "What are you doing here? You have no right to be here." He told him.

"Alex, relax, I called him." Amber tried to calm him down.

"You called him? Don't you remember what he has done?" Alex yelled.

"No, actually I don't because I was too freaking young and I wanted to find out. I talked about him a lot in therapy, I wanted to talk to him in person for once." Amber said calmly. "Sit down please."

"Alex, relax, I changed. I'm not the man I used to be." His father insisted.

"That's hard to believe." Alex muttered.

"Why can't you give him a chance, Alex?" Amber wondered.

"Because I do remember what it's like to be beaten up by him. I remember what it's like to pick him up from the floor of a bar because he was too drunk to get home on his own." Alex said "That's the dad he was to me."

"He changed Alex."

"Fine, Amber, believe what you want to believe. Talk to him, get to know him. See for yourself what kind of man he is. If you drag her down with you, I'm going to finish what I started 15 years ago." Alex said and left the room.

Amber followed him "Don't pull this crap again, Alex! I don't need you to protect me. He's a nice guy. Do you know that he's still touring around with his band?"

"I have to go." Alex said.

Amber walked into the dining room again and looked at her dad "He's such an asshole" she sighed.

"He has every right to hate me for what I did to him, Amber." Her father insisted.

"I'm glad you came." The girl smiled.

"I wanted to get to know you Amber. When I left you were a little girl." He said.

* * *

Lexie, Meredith and Cristina were standing in a bridal salon. "Tell me something to make me feel" Lexie ranted about the day she had had "Mark hates me and Derek isn't talking to me."  
"You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one." Meredith insisted. "It's like "the sun also rises". You read it once at school because you have to, and it'll sit in your shelf for the rest of time"  
"But it's a classic. I reread 'The sun also rises' like twenty times." Lexie told her sister.  
"It's a sad depressing story. Don't keep doing it! You are going to get married to an amazing guy and you are going to look beautiful." Meredith smiled.  
"Thanks for doing this Mer." Lexie smiled.  
"I'm your sister. There's nowhere else I'd rather be." Meredith tried to act cheered up.  
"You hate dress shopping." Cristina reminded Meredith while drinking champagne.  
"I hate dress shopping for me. Seeing my sister in a white gown that is poufy enough to stand up on its own is a whole different story." Meredith put on a bright smile.  
"I thought I should go for a simple A-line." Lexie said when she wore the trumpet dress Cristina had picked for her.

„If you haven't found it yet, keep looking" Meredith said politely.  
"Meredith, don't quit neuro because of me." Lexie blared out all of a sudden and out of the blue.  
Cristina's and Meredith's heads rose and they looked at Lexie "You know?" both said at the same time.  
"Amelia said something and I knew it was you." Lexie sighed "So don't quit because I made a mistake. I couldn't live with myself"

* * *

"You paged?" Mark looked at Jackson.  
"I, uh, I can't get outta here yet. I gotta follow up with my patient, make sure she's in her right free of mind."  
"Yeah. You okay?" he looked concerned for Jackson's well-being.  
"Yeah, I just I missed a surgery today that that's not true. You kept me from that surgery today, one I wanted to do for weeks, because of this thing with you and Lexie." Jackson rambled.  
"There is nothing between me and Lexie."  
"Yeah, I've been trying really, really hard to believe that. But there is a thing." Jackson sighed "And it's not going anywhere anytime soon. And this new thing with me and plastics? That's not going away either. Something's gotta budge. So I have to walk away from plastics for her."  
"So you're picking Lexie?" Mark asked "You can't do that to me!"  
"I've spent way too much time sabotaging my own life, Dr. Sloan. Yeah I'm picking Lexie." Jackson insisted "Or if you really want me to be on your service, you better let me start scrubbing in on your surgeries. I missed a nerve graft today because you wouldn't let me near your OR"

* * *

George knocked at the door of the attendings lounge. "Callie, I can take Sophia tonight. I know you've been asking everyone to babysit, but you haven't asked me. So, just let her spend the night with me." George offered. Callie sighed.  
"I thought you had this huge thing planned. You wanted to fly to DC. I thought you wanted to see her." Callie looked at him "That's why I didn't ask you."  
"What if we fight? What if she isn't happy to see me?" George looked at Callie. "That'd be bad."  
"You wanted clarity. Go there!" Callie insisted.  
"I'll call my mom. She loves Sofia." George said.  
"Thanks! And good luck!" Callie encouraged him "Don't take her to Vegas!"  
George nodded "Thanks!"

* * *

 _It's a little bit horrifying just how quickly everything can fall to crap. Sometimes it takes a huge loss to remind you of what you care about the most. Sometimes you find yourself becoming stronger as a result, wiser, better equipped to deal with the next big disaster that comes along. Sometimes. But not always._

* * *

"Derek isn't here." Amelia said in a harsh tone when Meredith came to check the neurosurgical prep room.  
"I know." She nodded.  
"Are you going to yell at me again?" Amelia wondered.  
"No, actually… I would like… " Meredith paused and looked at Amelia.  
"I don't have all day…" the attending told her.  
"I want back on your service" Meredith blared out. "I know this isn't okay for you.:"  
Amelia interrupted her "Meredith, I invested a lot of time in your education. I want you back on my service. I talked to Derek about it."  
"Are you insane?" Meredith's mouth was wide open.  
"I didn't mention your name, sister. Anyway, he told me that if I truly believe in someone's potential, I should tell that person and Meredith -you should be on neuro." Amelia smiled.  
"What about James? Do you see potential in him?" Meredith wondered.  
"I… I don't… and for the minute it feels great to be on my own." Amelia admitted.  
"You are living with us." Meredith reminded her.  
"Do you want me to move out?" Amelia smirked.  
"No, you can stay as long as you want." Meredith insisted.  
"But I won't. I'll finally find a place for myself. I never lived on my own. There was always someone." Amelia nodded "It's time, but I want you in my OR."


	58. Chapter 58

_Hey everyone, thanks for the reviews and sorry for the delay, but this chapter took a very long time to put together!  
Portugal was absolutely wonderful and I enjoyed this holiday a lot.  
_

* * *

**Chapter 58**

 _We always want the things we can't have. We want the family we never had. We always want more. We fall in love with our best friend, with our boss or with the married man next door and all we want to hear is 'I love you'._ _They say you fight fire with fire. We do it in medicine all the time. We cut you to repair your injury. We hurt you to heal you. We stoke the flames, but playing with fire is a dangerous thing._

* * *

10 weeks before the wedding  
Meredith sat down next to George in daycare "How was Christmas?" she wondered. With their different shifts they hadn't seen each other in a while and while Meredith was dropping off Zola and Christopher, George was ready to take Sofia home.  
"Good. We had dinner at mom's house for the first time since dad died." George smiled.  
"How are you and Anna?" Meredith wondered.  
"She's in DC and I keep thinking I should be there with her." George sighed.  
"But you don't want to leave Sofia." Meredith nodded. It was easy to understand.  
"I don't want to leave Sofia. I don't want to see her grow up over facetime. This isn't supposed to be so hard. You shouldn't have to choose between the people you love." George nodded. He had spend a significant amount of his free time trying to figure out a viable solution, but so far it had been impossible.  
"I thought you wanted to fly over." Meredith looked at him surprised. She knew he had argued with Jackson about this, but she had volunteered to take over one shift for him and Cristina had covered another one.  
"Well, we would have fought or we would have talked about fighting." He started. Meredith knew the feeling.  
"And you didn't want that. That's why Derek and I put our conversation on hold. He doesn't want us to leave. Anyway, I'm sure you can figure out a way. Once we are finished with our residency, we'll have more free time and… You could see her during the holidays"  
"and put her on a plane every other weekend? I don't want to uproot her." George sighed "Callie wouldn't like that"  
"Well, I'll be stuck here. I have an offer from the Brigham and Derek doesn't want to leave -at least that's what he told me on Christmas Eve. We had a huge fight." Meredith explained.  
"He's in the middle of a huge research project"  
"Something he could do in Boston." Meredith insisted. "I guess I'll just have to stay here"  
"You haven't talked to him about the Brigham?" George wondered.  
"Well, it's only an offer and I still have to come in for an interview." Meredith mumbled "And as he doesn't want to leave, I guess I'll just have to stay here."

* * *

When she left the OR at midnight, Mark was waiting for her with nice surprise. While Derek was stuck in another surgery, Mark had waited for all of them in front of the OR with canape and glasses of sparkling wine. Meredith sat down next to him and smiled. "You have a sister" Mark looked at her.  
"I have a lot of sisters -they keep showing up here. and one of them is getting married." Meredith sighed "and I have to help her pick a design for the invitations. It's ridiculous. I'm glad Derek and I never had to do that."  
"Yeah" Mark nodded "I'm glad I never had to do that." His voice was sad and his eyes looked like this sadness was taking over the most inner part of his soul.  
"It's my natural flight impulse that tells me she shouldn't do it, right?" Meredith looked at Mark "I mean Jackson, Jackson is…"  
"a good guy." Mark suggested. His mentee was getting married and unless he wanted to come across as an asshole of colossal proportion there was nothing he could do about it. Lexie and Jackson were celebrating the New Year at Ellis' house.  
"That he is. I was going to say 'not you'" Meredith admitted. She looked at Mark and neither of them said a word. It had been a long day for both of them, but Mark knew what Meredith was trying to tell him.  
"What's that supposed to mean?" Mark looked at her.  
Meredith had always imagined that Lexie would end up with him. "Oh nothing!" she evated.  
"Shoot" Mark insisted.  
"I just thought… when you came back, you came back for a reason." Meredith looked at Mark "and that reason wasn't Derek or this hospital. You are in love with my sister -you always have been. And no matter how hard you are trying to forget her, you can't. When you meet someone new, you can't fall in love with them because she isn't her…"  
"I have to let her move on" he insisted.  
Meredith got up and grabbed one of the cocktail napkins and put a few canapes into it. "It's not too late Mark, Happy New Year"

* * *

9 weeks before the wedding

Seattle was covered in snow and a windy breeze was turning the streets into a dangerous ice track and most surgeons and residents were stuck in the hospital. Derek sat in his office and tried to recover from the third consecutive ten-hour surgery in two days when his phone rang "Dr. Shepherd"  
"Speaking." He mumbled.  
"I'm Dr. Emarald Tusk. I'm head of the medical research department of Harvard University." The guy on the other end of the landline said.  
"I can't talk about my research right now." Derek tried to cut him off  
"I don't want to talk about your research, I'd like to offer you a position. We created a project and Dr. Springer recommended you to us. You can pick your own team and… shall I keep talking?" the person stopped and waited for Derek's answer. "Maybe we should meet in person to talk about this. Can you fly in on the weekend?"  
"I think I can figure that out." Derek nodded. "Thank you for the call"

* * *

Amber had been to Iowa for Christmas. Their mother had looked forward to her visit and Aron was on his meds now. The minute she arrived in Seattle, she was looking forward to seeing her brother.  
"Hey" she smiled and looked at her worked up brother who was filing charts at the nurses' station.  
"Hey, you came" he smiled.  
"Yeah, I believe in all of this New Year and new chances crap and I thought you'd want to hear how mom and Aron are doing -and classes are starting next week…" she rambled, but Alex interrupted her.  
"There's something I want you to see." He said. "Grab a pair of scrubs. I'm sure Lexie's or Meredith's are fine"  
Ten minutes later she was standing in front of two incubators in the NICU "Oh my God, they're tiny." She whispered  
"They came in 4 hours ago. Her mother ODed and now they're here. Already hooked on to narcotics." He sighed "There's a brain bleed and twin A needs monitoring"  
"I'm not doing drugs." Amber misunderstood what Alex was trying to tell her.  
"It's not about you. I had planned to take you out for dinner, but I can't. I have to monitor her -and I'd love for you to stay here." Alex said. "Just sit down here."  
"Do you think it's okay?" she wondered "I mean, I'm not a resident"  
"Yeah." Alex said "We're all over worked, I guess it's fine. Just don't touch anything and page me when their vitals change"

* * *

Amelia sat in her new apartment. There was pizza and soda, but nobody had made it as the ER was still overflown with people who had been in accidents on icy roads. "What are you doing? What happened?" she wondered when her brother walked in on his own.  
"Congrats and I got you something for your new apparment. And I wanted to ask you if you would consider being the Chief of neurosurgery."  
"A plant?" Amelia looked at the orchid Derek had bought "A plant? Chief of neuro? Why me?"  
"If I can trust anyone with my patients, it's you." Derek smiled.  
"You can't leave me…" Amelia looked at her brother. Ever since she had arrived in Seattle someone had been there for her.  
"Just think about it. I can do anything I want. – and you and James – you both like fries. Might as well try them." Derek suggested.  
"What is this supposed to mean?" Amelia looked at him.  
"He is a nice guy, you might as well give him another chance." He winked "After all, you'll be the Chief of Neuro and everything the light touches in our kingdom. A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day, Amelia, the sun will set on my time here, and will rise with you as the new king."  
"You are watching too much kid's television." Amelia giggled "Thank you Derek"

* * *

Twelve hours later Amber was still looking at the twins. She hadn't been to the bathroom and was secretly wondering where her brother had left. "What are you doing here?" a blonde attending wondered.  
"Alex wanted to watch her, but he was paged to the OR." Amber said.  
"You are Amber." Arizona realized when the girl turned around.  
"He's talking about me?" Amber wondered.  
"A lot." Arizona nodded and looked at the chart where Amber had documented her observations vicariously "Oh, sorry, I'm Arizona Robbins."  
"Respiration seems stable. Her heart rhythm indicates that there's further need to observe her." The attending read what Amber had written down "The pulse oximetry isn't normal"  
"and the chest x-ray that came in after Alex left shows that there's blood in her lungs and she has a hematoma. I told a nurse to page cardio and neuro." Amber smiled.  
"You did?" Arizona looked at her in surprise.  
"I just thought…" Amber hesitated. She knew those tests needed to be done, but she knew that Alex had told her not to touch anything, which technically she had not done.  
"Oh, I was just surprised that you can read those scans. How old are you?" Arizona wondered.  
"18, I'm in college." Amber smiled.  
"Pre Med?" Arizona wondered.  
"No." Amber hadn't thought about what kind of degree she wanted to do yet. Nonetheless, she had taken EMT classes and pre med. Emergency medicine was all she had been interested at since Ethan had died.  
"Why did you place them in another incubator?" Arizona wondered.  
"I read something about it. Her heart rate got steadier. They both…"  
"You have great instincts, Karev. But don't ever do this again!" Arizona said.  
"I told a nurse to do it" Amber said "I haven't touched them."

* * *

Amelia sat in the residents lounge when Teddy was walking in "Hey."  
"Hey. Late night with Owen?" Teddy wondered and sat down next to her.  
" like that." Amelia mumbled. The truth was that sitting in her apartment by herself had driven her insane.  
"So it's going well?" Teddy wondered.  
"Things are fine." Amelia rolled her eyes.  
"Why do I get the feeling there's something you're not telling me?"  
"Why don't you get the feeling that I don't want to talk?" Amelia shrugged "I don't need a shrink. Just let it go. Sorry. Oh. No. Uh I'm sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night."  
"No, you're right. You are right. I shouldn't have asked. I've been spending a lot of time on my couch alone, too." Teddy suggested "And the thing is I'm not a young woman. I mean, I know, I still got it, but I'm not young. So sometimes I think maybe I will spend the rest of my life alone."  
Amelia looked at her pager "I have to go the ER. Teddy, you can call me. We can hang out in the couch in sweats together."

* * *

8 weeks before the wedding

The temperatures had increased a little and the sun was shining when Amelia walked into the hospital on a Monday morning "Holla" she greeted a group that was standing in front of the elevator.  
"Holla"? Good weekend?" Mark wondered.  
"Didn't leave my apartment. Unpacked." Amelia smiled.  
"You've been there three weeks." Mark reminded her.  
"I'm methodical." Amy suggested.  
"You should be out there, doing things that make me feel old." Meredith suggested. She had been taking care of the kids on her own as Derek had stayed in the hospital the last couple of days.  
"She did greet us with a holla." James reminded them.  
"Thank you, James." Amelia nodded.  
"Have you met any of your neighbors?" Derek wondered.  
"I'm focused on me." Amelia insisted "I don't need to meet people. I'm meeting people in the hospital all day."  
"Well, socialization is an important part of your recovery. Have you considered dating?" Mark wondered.  
"So I can see how quickly I make dudes my age sprint in the other direction? Aw." Amelia laughed.  
James smiled politly "Oh, come on."  
"We're all doctors." Lexie suggested. "We're doctors with friends who don't scare easily"  
"Would you be open to dating someone we all vetted?" Mark wondered.  
"If I say no, it'll be a thing, right?" Amelia looked at Meredith  
They all nodded and Amelia gave in "Fine. Just don't make me regret it."

* * *

 _Baltimore four years earlier…  
"How did you score a table overlooking the kitchen?" Amelia was dressed up in a tight fitting black dress.  
"I took care of the chef's daughter a few months ago. High fever, vomiting. My intern diagnosed the flu, was about to send her home, but I had a feeling. We did a spinal tap bacterial meningitis. I saved her." James admitted. He had black hair and blue eyes.  
"Well this is me" Amelia smiled and looked at him. "Thank you for dinner. That was really lovely".  
"I had a wonderful time".James nodded.  
"Me, too" Amelia smiled. She hadn't felt this treasured in a long time. She wore scrubs almost 15 hours a day and when she was sleeping, she didn't have to wear anything, so wearing a dress was out of the ordinary for her.  
"Get home safely" James helped her into her jacket.  
"Yeah."Amelia nodded as she walked out the door.  
"Okay"James smiled and watched her leave. Her eyes were sparkling and the secrets that surrounded her made Amelia even more interesting. _

* * *

Amelia smiled and looked at her clock. Whoever had suggested this guy for a date deserved to be fired. The guy had been more than annoying for the entire course of their date. She had pretended to eat for the longest time, but now she was finished. "Did you like your steak?" he asked.  
"You don't already know?" Amelia rolled her eyes. She hated that date and wanted to kill whoever had arranged it for her.  
"So you liked it?" he asked again.  
"Almost as much as you ordering it for me." Amelia mumbled to herself.  
"Was that sarcasm?" he wondered.  
"You'd tell me if that was sarcasm, right?" Amelia smiled and raised her arm.  
"Thanks." She said when the waiter brought the cheque.  
"Could we split this, please?" Amelia reached for it.  
"Yeah." The guy nodded as Amelia got up and left.

* * *

While Derek was away in Boston Meredith was trying to be a single parent as good as she possible could. It was stressful, but somehow she managed to keep her head over water. She even managed to go to Dr. Sanders' office. He had an amazing offer for her, a two year transplant fellowship with the opportunity of a combined neuro fellowship.  
"Why not Cristina?"  
"I see more promise in you, surgery is a team sport, not a solo act" he insisted.  
"She has been trying here" Meredith reminded him "and if there's anyone who'll stand up for her team, it's Cristina"  
"Well, sometimes that's not enough. Meredith, I noticed she tried, but I actually think, it'd be great for the two of you to head into different direction. She needs someone who is at her level. Dr. Altman is a very good surgeon, but Cristina needs so learn new tricks." Dr. Sanders said "We both know she's a brilliant surgeon and as much as I'd like to keep her here, it'd kill her."  
"She's my person. "Meredith sighed.  
"Oh, Dr. Grey, we both know that you won't be here next year, given your husband's job opportunity in Boston, I just thought, I might bring this up for you to have an…"  
"What are you talking about?" Meredith looked at Matthew Sanders. Derek had told her he'd be in Boston for a consult.  
"You didn't know?" he looked at her. He knew he had made a mistake.  
"No, I didn't have a clue." Meredith sighed.  
"I thought he told you why he's going to Boston this weekend." Sanders sighed  
"Apparently he didn't" Meredith got up and ran out of his office.

* * *

Another day, another date. Amelia was cursing her friends for the choices they had made. "You're really interested in this? You cut into people's brains. If that's not interesting, then what's the hope for the rest of us? Something wrong?" the guy on the opposite of the table laughed.  
"Nah."she looked at her salad.  
"Are you sure?"  
"Yeah." Amelia rolled her eyes.  
He looked at his phone. "She just thinks when she says "jump," I should say, "how high?""  
"She?" Amelia looked at him with more questions than answers.  
"My ex-wife." He said non chalantly.  
"You know, it was perfect, and then all of a sudden, it wasn't. She doesn't think I deserve an explanation. But she still tells me she loves me when she drinks." He looked at his phone again.  
"I'm gonna cry." Amelia looked at the ceiling.  
"Ahh. Uh Mm."  
"Uh - Should we split the check?" she looked at him.  
"We should split the check, yeah." He stayed behind.

* * *

The next day Derek had returned from his trip to Boston. When he walked into the house Meredith sat in the living room with her laptop on her knees. The kids were asleep already. "What are you doing?" he asked when Meredith ignored his arrival.  
"Booking flights to New York, Boston and Cleveland." She smiled.  
"You want to do an interview at Mt. Sinai for a general surgery fellowship even though they offered you a neuro fellowship?" he wondered.  
"I'm not your little neuro resident. How did you even find out?"  
"Bailey mentioned it." He sighed.  
"Yeah, she made a few calls- and people are interested when they find out about my last name." Meredith laughed "I mean, I shouldn't be running into so many open doors as a general surgeon."  
"Should I look for jobs?" Derek chuckled.  
"Does it matter what I decide, Derek? I heard about the offer." Meredith looked at him sternly.  
"You heard." he nodded.  
"Yes, and I don't get it. Last month you are telling me we can't leave and now you expect me to pick up my things and come with you." Meredith looked at him.  
"I asked them to hold a position for you. In case I decided to take the position. "  
"It's called a trailing spouse. It's how my dad got his first job at the university. They wanted my mom."  
"I took the job!" Derek yelled.  
"And you were supposed to be stepping back. You said, "take this year and make it count. And I'll make sure you can do it." And you lied!" Meredith put her notebook away.  
"Sorry. I lied. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." He whispered.  
"So, you got this thing, and I gave up that piece. And I found a way to make it work with my job, my kids, and my research - with less help from you, and I did it." Meredith ran up and down the living room.  
"You're not a victim. I'm killing myself just as much as you are." He said.  
"And then you wanted - More pieces and more pieces. - And forth across the country - And now this is just too much." Meredith insisted even though moving to Boston had been just what she wanted a few weeks ago.  
"So I can spend time with my kids - And be a good father."  
"You can't just drag us away - So I can come live in your shadow." She said with resentment.  
"Shadow"? You have a job. You're gonna be working at Mass Gen or the Brigham. I could arrange that." He offered "You'd get a job even without me arranging something."  
"Right, that's how my father got his first job here. They wanted my mom, so she had to call the university and pull some strings and find something for Thatcher to do. It's called a trailing spouse."  
"This is not like that." Derek insisted.  
"This is exactly that. And it's not what I signed up for." Meredith reminded him even though she wasn't quite sure what she had signed up for.  
"You know what? You're-you're being selfish." Derek looked at her.  
"Well, I have to be, Derek, because you believe that your career is more important than mine."  
"At this moment in time, it is! "  
"No, not at this moment always." Meredith mumbled. "You will always be that hot-shot surgeon, and I will always be that young intern who fell in love with you."  
"If that's how you see yourself, that's your problem. I can't do anything about that."  
"That is not how I see myself. That is the issue here." Meredith yelled. "You should have told me about this!"  
"Boston. You can do your surgeries, you can do your research, you can do the islet cells there. There is nothing you can do here that you can't do there." Derek tried to reason with her. Their positions had changed. The arguments had changed.  
"But I don't want to! We're not just talking about my job, Derek. We're talking about my life. I grew up here. I made my family here. I live here. My life is here. I don't want to leave. Seattle is the one place I ever had a home. the East Coast is part of my disintegrated lonely life" Meredith explained. They both sat down on the couch.  
"You went to Boston when things got sour between us, your sister is living in Boston, my family is living in New York" Derek insisted. It still felt strange to think of Maggie as her sister.  
"Your sister is living here. My sister is living here, my father is living here." Meredith turned around Derek's argument.  
"You hardly consider your father family."  
"No I don't actually, but Cristina, George, Alex, Mark – everyone at this hospital they are my family." Meredith smiled "They are my family"  
"And Cristina and Alex will leave. Just like we are going to. Harvard is an incredible opportunity."  
"Well, the kids and I are going to stay"

* * *

7 weeks before the wedding

"Are you and Anna okay?" Meredith sat down next to George at the lunch table.  
"We are living on opposite sides of the country." He looked up and didn't say anything.  
"Which means?" Meredith looked at him. Derek wanted to move and she didn't want him to have his will.  
"I'm miserable here and she's… I don't know… she's doing therapy… I don't want to be miserable, I'm not myself without her. You are thinking about Boston?" he wondered. Derek had told him about Boston and they had talked about the feeling of separation that came with it.  
"I don't know. I don't want to give in, but at the same time I want to stay, but at the same time I don't want to live without him. It's… " Meredith paused.  
"complicated. It's pretty complicated." George nodded.

* * *

Lexie and Jackson sat in a small bakery not far away from the street Lexie had grown up in. The woman had done her parents' wedding cake and was a lovely old lady who liked to have a chat. "If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same" the baker told them "I've been in the business for over 40 years, the cakes never change. But I'll leave you two alone now. Just try them and tell me which ones you like"  
"Thank you, Gloria. I like red velvet." Lexie smiled when she tasted one of the cakes that was covered in white vanilla.  
"So do I" Jackson smiled and took a fork.

* * *

 _Baltimore four years earlier…_

 _Amelia and James sat on a lunch table in the cafeteria..""Speed"?" James looked at Amelia in disbelief.  
"Yeah." Amelia nodded.  
"Every woman I know prefers "Speed" over "Die Hard."" He noted.  
"Of course they do, because "Speed's" about Keanu doing everything that he can to protect Sandy. Every girl wants that."Amelia reminded him.  
"You have such pretty eyes." He told her.  
"Abandoning the subtle flirtation thing."Amelia looked at her pager, but it wasn't a busy day  
"And smart" he added.  
"Stop."Amelia insisted playfully.  
"And challenging."he smirked.  
"Are you always this aggressive?" she wondered.  
"I'm a douchey E. , remember?" he joked.  
"Does it work?" she wondered  
"You're here."_

* * *

Mark walked up to Meredith and Amelia who were waiting for the elevator on a Monday morning "It was great, right? Don't answer. I already know."  
Amelia looked at him in shock. Meredith smirked "I mean, were you guys also part of the team that vetted Sarah Palin?"  
"I'm so sorry. I thought Regan was over her." Meredith told Amelia.  
"And I thought Marshall was a good old-fashioned Texas boy." Jackson nodded.  
Derek walked by and whispered something in Meredith's ear "What are we talking about?"  
"Amelia's awful dates." She replied  
Dererek looked at his sister "Oh, you're dating. Oh, that that's good."  
"Yeah, no. That's over." Amelia looked at all of them.  
"Oh, come on. Bad dates are kind of a necessary evil." Mark insisted.  
"I dated a poet once. He was a really, really bad poet. Turns out the odds of finding a a Poe or a Frost are like a million to one." Lexie smirked and Mark laughed.  
"Dating Edgar Allan Poe would probably be a drag. I mean, if I had to imagine." Jackson nodded.  
"I mean, finding someone shouldn't feel like a job. My parents met at a dance. They both walked in, saw each other across the room, that was it." Amelia fantasised.  
"Yeah, but that was a different time." Derek reminded her.  
"Okay, mister "I met a girl in a bar"" Amelia chuckled.  
"Oh, I went out with a guy who said he knew the best brunch spot in Seattle. Well, he wasn't lying. The rub was, it was being served by his cult." Lexie smirked and Mark began to calculate the number of guys Lexie had dated in her life.  
"Ohh. I'll do you one better. Imagine you're having a lovely time, and then at the end of the night, your date is engaged to someone else." April came by and looked at Jackson. This had been how she had found out about the engagement.

* * *

Alex ran into Amber in a supply closet. Even though she was supposed to be in college for all he knew, she was wearing nurse scrubs and was carrying syringes. "What's that?"  
"Relax Alex" Amber let go off the package and they both looked at it as it fell to the ground.  
"I thought you were sober." Alex said. Amber looked tired and worn out, it was the conclusion that jumped to his mind.  
"I am. This isn't for me, it's for… nevermind." Amber picked up the box from the ground.  
"Amber, you're on time. Great!" Arizona looked at Amber.  
"You didn't steal the syringe." Alex smiled and kneed down to help her  
"Does she look like she's stealing? She has organized the intern lab and done a few jobs around the hospital for me." Arizona explained "I was looking for you"  
"I'm fine, Alex." Amber handed over the box to Alex.

* * *

Dr. Sanders walked up to Derek. "Are you okay Dr. Shepherd?"  
"My wife isn't talking to me, Meredith and I had a fight last week. We haven't been talking" he sighed "my sister is super secretive and my kids, they are a handful. I guess I'm not okay."  
"Nobody around here likes me. I haven't found a golf buddy." Matthew suggested "I guess I'm not okay either."  
"I haven't been golfing since Addison and I sold our house in the Hamptons." Derek looked at Dr. Sanders "Never really got around to it here"  
"Want to take your mind off everything and go to Jefferson Park?" Dr. Sanders wondered.  
"I guess, that'd be a fine idea." Derek nodded "I guess, you should get your mind off things."  
"Maybe I can persuade you to stay." Matthew laughed "It wouldn't be easy to find another neurosurgeon like you."  
"So this is a business proposition." Derek sighed.  
"To the contrary." Dr. Sanders told him "I just think, you might want to change your mind. Meredith's offer here is really good and before Harvard came around I heard you were determined to stay around"

* * *

6 weeks before the wedding

Meredith and Alex sat in the residents' lounge and tried to study for their boards when Bailey walked in. "What's the matter with you two?"she wondered.  
"I'm failing my boards" Meredith sighed and looked over the material. During their last training session Derek had interrogated her about a procedure they had done a year ago.  
"You won't" Bailey smiled softly "I trained you, you are the quiet in the storm, you have been since we met. If I could pick anyone of you to perform surgery on me, I'd be you."  
"Thank you." Alex mumbled.  
"And you, Karev, I've never seen anyone who improved so much. You are a beloved resident, you are amazing with those kids. You'll pass." Bailey sat "So tell me about the risks associated with angioplasty"

After Bailey had left, Meredith and Alex were on their own. "I wanna trust Amber again, but I can't."  
"Trust is hard to rebuild." Meredith nodded "Maybe you'll just have to trust her -even if you don't understand what she's doing."  
"She's been talking to our dad. She came into the kitchen yesterday and said 'I've been talking to dad and I'll keep talking to him. We went out for dinner after one of my meetings last week' all I do think about is that I want to punch him and I want to punch Dr. Robbins. She's helping Amber." Alex covered his face with a piece of paper  
"Amber is not a child anymore." Meredith insisted "You have to accept her choices -even if they don't make sense to you."  
"I know" Alex nodded "but sometimes, I just want to kick her ass because she's so volatile."  
"And you have to love her anyway." Meredith smirked.

* * *

Amelia sat on her couch. It was another lonely Friday night in her apartment. Another night where she wished she would be somewhere else. She was watching television to get her mind off her surgeries and patients. She needed time to be herself, but being alone wasn't helping. _"It's Friday. What do you kids want for dinner? French fries! French fries! They want French fries, and you don't want to break the bank. So why not turn that tired sack of potatoes into something your kids actually want with the e-z cut American fry maker? Adjust the blade settings, and snap!"_ the choir in the ad sang. "Traditional cut shoestring even restaurant-quality steak fries really, really good fries." James' words from four years ago echoed in her mind. She grabbed her coat and left her apartment.

Twenty minutes later she pulled up at a diner across the street from the hospital. "You know Billy's on north canon?" Amelia asked when she found James at a table in the back.  
"I'm there every Friday night." He smiled. "Really, really good fries. When's the last time you had really, really good homemade fries? Really, really good fries are hard to come by. Really, really good fries." They both laughed.  
"I prefer steak fries, but I guess these will do." She said and grabbed a few.  
"Just be careful with the ketchup. Why did you come? " James looked at her  
"I wanted to discuss our patient." Amelia lied.  
"Our stable patient whose test results won't be complete until the morning?" James looked at her "Why did you come? "  
"What would you say if I told you that my TV told me to?" Amelia laughed.  
"Does that happen often?" he teased her.  
"Mm. First time. I'm not on drugs." Amelia smiled at him.  
"Sit down." He nodded.

* * *

 _Baltimore four years earlier…._

 _"What time is it?" Amelia wondered. Her shoulders were covered with his jacket.  
"I don't know." James lied. Amelia and he had been walkig through Baltimore for hours now.  
"Well, you didn't look at your watch." Amelia encouraged him to give her an answer, but grabbed his arm instead. "Oh, my God. It is almost midnight. I gotta go."  
That's why I didn't want you to know what time it was." James winked.  
"Mm. Oh, uh, your jacket." Amelia noticed and tried to hand it over.  
"No. Keep it. That way, you have to talk to me again" James insisted and withstood the temptation to kiss her "And if you don't, I'll have you arrested for theft."  
"When a girl lets a guy buy her dinner, she has certain expectations." Amelia leaned in for a kiss, but James withstood.  
"What are you talking about?" he wondered.  
"Really, really good fries are hard to come by" she laughed "You were in my head."_

* * *

The next day went by quickly. Amelia was stuck in the OR and never saw anything but brains and when she saw James the next time they were talking about a patient that had been rushed to the OR. When she walked up to him three days later she sat down next to him, stole some of his fries and smiled. "I never thanked you for that dinner."  
"You're welcome." James nodded. "Turns out you really like fries"  
"Okay, all of this is just making my couch seem that much more appealing." Amelia sighed when she looked at the results of their patients' labs. "I've been here for three days straight."  
"Who are you gonna meet on your couch?" James teased her.  
"Oh, I met you on a couch. Or was I in bed?" Amelia reminded him.  
"On call room" he nodded "I mean, it was probably the bed, I would guess."  
"I'm not trolling the Internet for dates. I've seen what's out there. Alone is better." Amelia looked at James and smiled.

* * *

Lexie and Jackson sat at the dinner table and browsed through the binder. They had not found a place for the ceremony yet and were running out of time. Every location they had called had either been booked or too small for the number of guests they were looking to accomondate.  
"We're having whatever ceremony you want." Lexie said after she had browsed through the catalogue.  
"It's your ceremony too, I'm fine with whatever you want -as long as it shows who we are." Jackson smiled and kissed Lexie.  
"Who are we?"Lexie wondered.  
"We are insecure and we don't know who we are yet. We are not complete on our own… we need someone else to complete us." Jackson sighed and looked at Lexie who was checking traditional locations "Do you want a religious ceremony?"  
"I… You're not religious… I don't want to force anything on you. But I did dream of getting married in our church, but I can do without this. I know that it wouldn't be you." Lexie said "Maybe the officiant can read a text and we can get married underneath the trees in Meredith's garden."  
"It's where your dad got married the first time" Jackson reminded her. "He talked to me about marriage a lot. He invited me over."  
"It doesn't mean bad luck" Lexie wished "It doesn't have to be bad luck."  
"I'd like another option" Jackson kissed her forehead.  
"Alright, we just have to find one." Lexie said "We could do it at the hotel"  
"You wouldn't mind?"  
"Honestly at this point, I just want us to get married"

* * *

"Are you going to talk to me?" Derek wondered when he walked into the living room at 4.30 am in the morning. Meredith was up already as there were three new islet cell patients this morning.  
"Oh, I need time – as much time as you needed to tell me about that offer- apparently." Meredith mumbled and continued to prepare the kids' lunch.  
"What are we fighting about? Me not telling you about that offer or the fact that I assumed that my wife would be supportive." Derek stepped into her way.  
"You could work anywhere." Meredith insisted and still managed to walk past him despite his effort to block her way.  
"So could you – there are phone calls from representatives of every major hospital in the United States." Derek pointed at their answering machine. "They want you – even though I have a feeling that some of them mixed up your specialty and mine."  
"Get over yourself! I'm not going to stand back. I'm the sun and you can go and suck it!" Meredith yelled and hoped that neither Zola nor Christopher would wake up "I'll stay in the guest room until the wedding. I need to rest for all this crazy wedding planning and I need time to think. They should have ran off to Vegas. That would have saved all of us a lot of trouble".  
"This is my career Meredith." Derek tried to persuade her. This offer meant a lot to him.  
"And I'm a 5th year resident who has a two-year fellowship ahead of herself. I need to make a choice for my career." Meredith stood her ground.  
"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The funding- I've never been in charge of a higher budget." Derek said.  
Meredith shook her head "And our kids are the most precious thing you ever were in charge of. You said you'd take care of them while I do my fellowship, they aren't a consolation price. You don't even need this for your career, you are God's gift to neurosurgery already."  
"I'm not God's gift to neurosurgery." Derek yelled.  
"You act like it." Meredith looked into his eyes "I never had a choice. I went to Dartmouth because I wouldn't have gotten into any other decent college unless my parents were alumni. I had to take the offer in Seattle because mom was sick and someone had to be there for her. She had nobody and I took care of her. Leave this one choice to me and don't make me pick between my job and my family."  
"I don't know if I can do this!" Derek said.  
"I'm not begging you! I'm telling you! Have a good day!" Meredith told him and walked out.

* * *

Owen and Amelia were laying in an on call room, both of them were facing the ceiling. "I lay awake at night, that's why I'm at the hospital all the time. I can't sleep. It's all those things…"  
"I lay awake too." Amelia said "I don't know why. It seems I just don't know how to be all by myself."  
"My mom doesn't know I'm back in Seattle"  
"You should go and see her" Amelia sighed "That's what most people would tell you, but I'm not meddling. I'm not a meddler. I never introduced my mom to James. We were dating for almost one year and I never mentioned him, he proposed and my mother didn't even know he existed. I shouldn't… I shouldn't judge you"  
"What was so bad about him?" Owen wondered.  
"Oh, nothing, he was fine. A gentleman, his mom was annoying – but his dad was fine." Amelia remembered "Everything about dating him was so easy- and I want to go back to easy"  
"Cristina likes hearts" Owen stated "I never liked hearts. They are the most fragile organ in the human body. You don't need a scalpel to cut it open, that's the scary thing about it. One minute you are fine and the next moment you are bleeding."  
"I could come and see your mother with you" Amelia offered. "It's easier if you don't have to do it on your own."  
"I'm fine, thanks" Owen declined "I'm not ready. I wish I was, but I'm not."

* * *

5 weeks before the wedding

Amelia and Meredith stood in the OR and were casually chatting about their weekends "You went out with James?" Meredith smirked.  
"Being alone wasn't terrible. I I was nesting. I was making progress on my apartment Sort of." Amelia summarized "Now all I can think about is mixed-message James not kissing me. I mean, I am not the girl who sits around trying to unmix messages. I mix them."  
"I think I follow that. Look, this this part of the relationship happens only once." Meredith said even though she didn't really have a clue what she was talking about. It just sounded right.  
"There is no relationship." Amelia insisted.  
"Okay, what I'm trying to say is, let the attraction percolate." Meredith smirked "Play hard to get"  
"Play hard to get? "Amelia smirked "Is that what you are trying to do with my brother?"  
"I didn't say that. But it does work." Meredith smirked  
"Yeah." Amelia rolled her eyes "I'm not doing that."

* * *

 _Baltimore three years and nine month earlier…_

 _"But it doesn't make sense. I'm hot. I would kiss me. Wouldn't you kiss me?" Amelia ranted to another resident  
"Absolutely." Hhe nodded uncomfortably "I would, yes."  
"I didn't ask for this. He pursued me. Would not let it go." Amelia ranted "Finally I gave in, this is what I get."  
"You can't let it upset you." He tried to calm her down.  
"I'm not upset. I'm pissed" Amelia glanced.  
"Maybe he's just not that into you." He smirked "I've always wanted to say that".  
"Maybe now is not the right time, Sean. I got waxed. Like "waxed" waxed. I spent a small fortune on new underwear and heels, both of which are supremely uncomfortable, and for what?" she looked at him.  
"Oh, the things we do." He rolled his eyes "Women."  
"I mean, why, when we could be on our couch in sweats, vegging out to a marathon of "bitch snapped"? Because you like him. I want to do something that justifies the pain I'm inflicting upon myself." Amelia ranted. "Do you think he's..."  
"He's not gay. My gaydar is never off" he tried to reason with her "Maybe he got over a really bad break-up - and he wants to go slowly."  
"You are a bitch." Amelia looked at Sean. "Is that really a thing, going slowly? I mean, doesn't that only happen in the movies? I'm done. I'm .. I'm done."  
"No, you cannot quit." Sean insisted. "And you can't put all your eggs in one basket. The quest to find somebody to spend your life with is not easy. You need time and fortitude".  
"Do you hear yourself?" Amelia laughed. "I I was just looking to get out of my apartment."  
"Okay" Sean nodded "Well then staying in that vein, humor me a little longer. Are you free tonight? No, really. I mean, you could stay home and wonder why James isn't kissing you or Ah. Ortho surgeon. Totally single. Great conversationalist. - Mm. - Definitely not a sociopath Want me to see if he's free tonight? Well, you're already waxed." _

* * *

Meredith and Cristina sat in the lab together "Offer 1: Mt. Sinai, offer 2: Cleveland Offer 3: Tulane -and I didn't even apply or interview there."  
"It'd be weird if we'd end up working at the same hospital again, wouldn't it?" Meredith wondered-  
"Why?" Cristina wondered.  
"One of my interns thought we were dating." Meredith giggled.  
"We used to screw boys like whores on tequila." Cristina laughed. "Your mom would be proud."  
"She wouldn't" Meredith smiled and they high-fived. "Those were the days. So you don't want to work with me?"  
"No, I didn't say that, I just thought it might be easier if I got away from everything here." Cristina sighed.  
"How do you get all those interviews? All I got was crap." Alex walked in.  
"I'm brilliant." Cristina smirked.  
"I'm Dr. Grey." Meredith laughed "and my husband is Dr. Shepherd"  
"and I got an interview at Dillard. It's in the middle of nowhere. Even O'Malley and Kepner got better offers." Alex said.  
"Dillard?" Meredith looked at him.  
"Never heard of it." Cristina stated.  
"Yeah, because it's a bogus hospital up in the woods." Meredith looked at her "You can't take a job at Dillard"  
"We picked up a newborn there once." Alex explained.  
"and the ambulance broke down. The mobile service was horrible." Meredith nodded. "and a car crashed into our ambulance."  
"Have you ever wondered what happened to the kids who were in the other car? The baby is fine Arizona fixed her." Alex wondered "But, their mom died and their dad died and… it was just them."  
"The baby was safer on the road than in that hospital." Meredith sighed.

* * *

Jackson and Mark were at a jeweller. Jackson was surprised to find Mark here instead of his best man "Why is April not here?" he looked at Mark.  
"She's in surgery. She told me to come." Mark explained.  
"And here you are." Jackson nodded. They went through a number of possible wedding bands when Jackson reached for one. "Lexie would like that."  
"No, Lexie wouldn't like that. She's like a delicate flower. She doesn't need so much bling bling." Mark said "She doesn't need much"  
"Thanks! Thanks for doing that." Jackson nodded. "I know how hard it must be for you to see me leaving behind the free life, to be tied down to one woman for the rest of my life. Believe me, I am."  
"That's not what I meant." Mark said "It'd be happy to get married to a woman like Lexie. It's a priviledge."  
"It is." Jackson nodded and handed over his credit card to pay for the ring Mark had picked.

* * *

Meredith and Bailey were standing in the OR when Lexie came in "Meredith, I have to talk to you…" she said.  
"Lexie, I'm kind of busy here." Meredith reminded her sister "If this is about the wedding…"  
"It is Meredith, it is." Lexie insisted.  
"I'll wear anything you want. I'll wear whatever you choose." Meredith smiled softly.  
"It's not about the dress." Lexie said.  
"What is it about, Lexie? Cause this better be important because right now there's a patient waiting for me and Dr. Sloan in OR4 which I have to get to after this." Meredith encouraged her to finally speak up.  
"You are scrubbing in with Mark?" Lexie wondered.  
"So what is this about, Lexie? The wedding…" Meredith sighed.  
"I can't get married, I mean, I'm a resident. I don't have to settle down and…" Bailey and Meredith both rolled their eyes when they heard Lexie's words.  
"it's normal, I get it, cold feet and everything. Cold feet are normal, well, unless you get married in Vegas, but you love Jackson and he loves you." Bailey glanced at Meredith while she told Lexie.  
"What if there's somebody else? What if I think I love him more than …"  
"It's just cold feet, Lexie. Just get over it." Meredith yelled "Get out of the OR."  
"and you should talk to your husband, Dr. Grey." Bailey insisted "How long has this little fight going on?"  
"You left your husband when he told you to either pick general or a peds fellowship" Meredith reminded him "You divorced him – and I can't divorce him- I don't want to. I just have to find a way to get over myself."

* * *

 _Baltimore three years and eight month earlier…._ _  
"Hey. Wow." Amelia and James were making out while she tried to unlock her door. She finally opened it and he carried her into the bed room. She turned around and kissed him "Do you have a condom? I didn't want to be presumptuous".  
"I have some. I think" Amelia mumbled.  
"You are so gorgeous." He said and tried to unlock her zipper. Amelia shivered, flashbacks of the night Ryan died came back to her head "What's wrong?"  
"Sorry. Uh Can you not touch me?" she said and pushed him out the door._

When Amelia walked into her kitchen in the morning she was surprised to see James there "You're here." She noted.  
"Yeah. I got this thing where I can't let a date end in tears, so I was gonna make you breakfast, but you only have salsa, ice cream, and bread. Bon appetite".  
"I owe you an explanation." Amelia insisted.  
"You don't." James put down Amelia's plate in front of her.  
"I like you. And last night, I wanted to. I mean, I've got enough condoms to supply a frat house. I thought I was ready." Amelia sighed "But then when you started taking off my dress I haven't had sex with someone who mattered in a long time. And now I'm sober, and I'm in a good place, but in some ways I'm still a mess. So I'm giving you an out".  
"What do you want on your toast, salsa or ice cream?"James smirked.  
"What are you lookin' at?" Amelia wondered.  
"You" James smiled and kissed her. .  
"No, what are you looking at?" Amelia wondered. "I have a freckle."  
"What about it?" James wondered.  
"It looks like Indiana." Amelia smiled.  
"Can I kiss it?" James asked playfully. .  
"You're going to anyway." Amelia smirked and moved closer to him.  
"I see a few more down here that require my attention." He kissed her underneath her t-shirt  
"Okay, okay, okay, okay." She smiled because he tickled her.  
"What are you thinking about?"  
"I don't know." Amelia sighed.  
"Don't know or won't say?"  
"I'm not thinking about anything."  
"And that's good."

* * *

"I made a few calls and you have a job interview in Baltimore – Ginsberg is looking forward to talking to you." Amelia stated when she walked up to Meredith.  
"You have told her it's me?" Meredith whispered.  
"I told her it was you. And I told her that Derek must not find out, so you're safe. Does Derek know that you are plotting to get him away from you?" Meredith joked.  
"He's the one that wants to leave." Amelia said with a smile on her face.  
"You are in a good mood." Meredith noticed.  
"I am. I'm on fire. -In a good way." Amelia nodded "James and I have been sort of dating."  
"That's good – I guess. " Meredith nodded "I'm happy for you"  
"So what about you and him? " Amelia wondered.  
"He wants to leave and… I don't know if I want to go to Boston. My mother went to Boston for her fellowship and I promised myself never to be like her." Meredith sighed "It sucks"  
"Your mother took away your kids from her dad to pursue her career. Would staying here be any different?" Amelia said "I'm Derek's sister and I want him to be happy, but I'm your mentor, so I want you to succeed too."

* * *

4 weeks before the wedding

April was eating a sandwich on a bench in front of the ER. James walked up to her. "I saw you crying in the supply closet." He sat down next to her.  
"I lost a patient" she lied.  
"You are a trauma surgeon" he reminded her "It was about Jackson, wasn't it?"  
"Yeah!" she nodded and put away her sandwich.  
"April, if he keeps hurting you and you keep going back to him, it's not him who is hurting you, it's you hurting yourself" James told her "It's not healthy"  
"You are dating Amelia again. After she basically fled the state when you asked her if she wanted to marry you." April went off "You don't get to tell me to get Jackson out of my head if you are pinning over Amelia."  
"We were different people back then." James tried to make an excuse  
"That's what? Two years ago." April ranted "Why don't you ask her again?"

* * *

"Zola looks cute in that dress" Lexie said.  
"You like it? I'll buy it if you like it." Meredith nodded "and I'll buy one for Maria and Laura. DO you know Laura's size?"  
"I'll ask Molly." Lexie said "I haven't seen her in forever"  
"You calmed down" Meredith noticed "I hope bridezilla isn't returning to Seattle soon."  
"I'm not a bridezilla." Lexie insisted "I just want it to be perfect"  
"I had a small affair" Meredith smiled.  
"You got drunk married in Vegas" Lexie giggled.  
"Don't tell our kids" Meredith insisted "They don't have to hear that yet. Just promise me you'll do the right thing."  
"Well,you promised me to drive the get away car" Lexie jokes "No, I'm fine"

* * *

 _Baltimore 3 years and 8 months ago  
"How do you keep up with what's going on in the world?" Amelia wondered after James had told her that he didn't own a TV  
"I read the paper." He suggested.  
"Mm. Smarty-pants probably has a subscription to the "Times.""she teased him.  
"The "Journal." I prefer objectivity in my news." He corrected her.  
"You're calling out one of the most esteemed news publications in the world for a lack of objectivity?" she asked in bisbelief.  
"How can it be objective if all of its reporters are progressives?" he wondered.  
It damned Amelia that James and she might not be sharing the same belief system "Who did you vote for? In the last presidential who did you vote for?" she asked and got up on her bed.  
"It's called a secret ballot, and it's the foundation of our democracy."he suggested.  
"You're a Republican" she looked at him.  
"Because I wouldn't tell you who I voted for?" he wondered.  
Amelia laughed "Because you ended a sentence with "foundation of our democracy.""  
"I'm a conservative." He nodded.  
"Just say you're a Republican" Amelia insisted, but James didn't say a word "Why?"  
"Because you really, really want me to." He smiled.  
"I'm in bed with a Republican."she shook her head.  
"I'm pretty sure it's not the first time. Just think back to the best sex you've ever had." He smirked.  
"Not funny."she said.  
"Deal breaker?" he wondered.  
"Abortion?"  
"Pro-life."he answered patiently.  
"The death penalty?"  
"This is the sexiest pillow talk ever." He smirked.  
"Don't try to avoid it." Amelia insisted.  
"The Bible says "an eye for an eye.""  
"Ohh! All right, that logic drives me crazy! You just said that you're for life, but you're for the death penalty?" Amelia remarked.  
"I am for life innocent life."  
"Whose job is it to judge innocence and guilt?" she wondered "Does the person who took Sarah Nelson deserve to live? Doesn't the Bible also say something about turn the other cheek and God's the only one who can judge and stuff like that?"  
"Wouldn't have pegged you as someone who would quote scripture." James smirked.  
"I did not quote scripture. I paraphrased. And everybody knows that stuff."Amelia said while James opened one of their fortune cookies. "You are capable of being a great leader."  
"So I'm not, I guess."she smiled.  
""You can't have rainbows without the rain." Is that insanely stupid or incredibly profound?" James read the other one."It's a Dolly Parton quote." Her mom loved to dance to Dolly Parton songs with her.  
"I can't believe you know that." Amelia stated.  
"I'm not the one being seduced by the philosophies of Dolly Parton." He smirked.  
"Okay, we weren't all bequeathed a subscription to the "Journal" at birth." Amelia teased him. "How many other Alex P. Keatons did your parents turn out? "  
"Just me."he smiled.  
"I have, uh, three sisters and a brother who is as close to perfect as a human can be. People looking for a higher power submit to him." Amelia laughed.  
"When I look at you, all I see is perfect." He whispered and they noticed that there were beams of sunlight shining into the room  
"The sun's coming up."  
"The sun is coming up."James nodded and ran his fingers through her hair.  
"Thank you." She smiled. _

* * *

April waited for Jackson in front of the OR. She was holding a box with a massive amount of wedding stuff. Little presents – mints with mint to be printed on the box-, props for the photobooth, photos of both Lexie and Jackson growing up and her speech draft. "If you want to do this, you have to do it without me. I can't stand by your side and smile for the camera if al I keep thinking is that this is a big mistake." She told Jackson and handed over the box.  
"You think this is a big mistake?" Jackson wondered.  
"You don't love her." April insisted "I know you don't love her the way you should"  
"You can't stand that I love her." Jackson set go off the box.  
"Anyway, you have to do this without me."April said "I told you I can't do it, and I won't do it"  
"I will. I'm going to do this without you, April." Jackson picked up the box and walked away.

* * *

3 weeks before the wedding

Owen walked into the attendings lounge in the middle of the night and spotted the shape of someone on the couch " you awake?" he wondered.  
"I'm awake. I might be hallucinating, but I'm awake." She mumbled.  
"I don't want to bother you." Owen apologized.  
"I've been laying here for weeks. Everything's a bother." Amelia sighed.  
"You look like death warmed over." Owen admitted.  
"Thanks, Heidi Klum." Amelia smiled "Mm. I got a headache that would put Godzilla in a fetal position. I don't know if it's noon or a quarter to midnight or, well, 1976."  
"It's 2:00 A. M. What the hell are you doing here? "  
"I couldn't fall asleep in the on-call room." Amelia admitted.  
"You on call?" Owen wondered.  
"No. I James and I had a fight. He proposed and he's still at my apartment, which, in an act of sheer freakin' brilliance, I stormed out of. Who storms out of their own apartment? Ugh." Amelia cursed "I'm so embarrassed. I mean, I I was just trying to stand up for myself, and now Oh, God. I'm so humiliated. I can't go back. I just I wanted I just need to sit with someone."  
"Sit." Owen said and they sat next to each other.

* * *

"Why did you summon us here?" George wondered when he arrived at Joe's bar.  
"I need a best man." Jackson said "April quit"  
"I'm an excellent best man, Avery. Derek here can attest to that." Mark offered.  
"Well, worst case scenario, he'll bang your fiancée in ten years time. He's been okay." Derek chuckled.  
"And I'm your mentor, Avery, remember that." Mark winked.  
"How long do you know each other?" Jackson looked at Mark and Derek.  
"Derek and I, we go way back." Mark lifted his scotch off the bar table.  
"He put my frog into the microwave when he was 7." Derek rolled his eyes.  
"I never pressed start." Mark suggested.  
"My mom caught him before he did." Derek laughed.  
"I've always been on my own." Mark said "Before I met Derek I had been on my own."  
"He's an excellent best man" Derek said "He's been the best friend I could've ever asked for."

* * *

 _Baltimore 3 years and 6 months ago…_

 _Amelia, James and his parents sat in a restaurant. It was the first time Amelia had met them "So, Amelia, do you have any siblings?" his mother wondered.  
"Three sisters, one brother. All doctors." Amelia said with a polite smile.  
"Oh. Did your mother work?" James mother continued.  
"Yeah, she was a nurse in the Navy for 25 years."Amelia nodded  
"That's probably where y'all got the idea to be doctors." His mother smiled "Mm. I teach English. No idea where he got an aptitude for science. But I couldn't be prouder."  
"Ah, I just direct traffic in the E.R. Amelia's the genius at the table." James praised his girlfriend's qualities.  
"He's being modest. The night we met, he caught something I missed, saved a man's life."Amelia smiled at him.  
"Well, I'm not the least bit surprised, but then I might be a teeny bit biased."his mother smiled.  
"It is cool seeing the three of you together as a family. You guys get along really well. It's nice."Amelia complimented them.  
"Well, that is so sweet of you to say, know, I think it might have to do with the fact that I was able to be at home when he was growing up." She insisted. "What kind of surgery do you practice?"  
"I'm a neurosurgeon." Amelia said "at least that what I want to be."  
"Oh." His mother said.  
"Amelia." James took her hand and tried to calm her down.  
"Your job sounds as hard as rocket science. Is that something you could ever do part-time?" his father wondered.  
"Mom, we talked about this." James interrupted them.  
"Why would I do the thing I love part-time?" Amelia wondered.  
"Well, I was thinking, if you ever want to have children –" His mother started, but Amelia interrupted him "I won't quit working."  
"- Amelia, you don't have to answer. Mom, now is not the time." James insisted.  
"I am just making polite conversation." His mother looked at him.  
"It's okay. I can answer" Amelia smiled.  
"She promised not to interrogate you." James insisted.  
" Well, it's not an interrogation." Amelia smiled politely.  
"You see? I just want to make sure that you're taken care of."his mother reassured him  
"Mom, not the place, not the time, not your business. Let's move on."James smiled.  
"Well, I'm gonna have the chicken parmesan." His father abided._

* * *

Lexie and Jackson sat on the dinner table again. Their wedding planner was there to discuss her suggestions for the seating chart with them "Mark is the best man? You asked Mark to be the best man?" Lexie looked at Jackson. She could not believe that he had not told her.  
"I thought I told you that April quit." Jackson sighed. "He was the obvious pick."  
"What you didn't tell me is that you chose Mark, why not George or Alex?" Lexie wondered.  
"Because he's my mentor and he's been like a dad to me." Jackson looked at Lexie.  
"He's going to sit at the head table?" This was out of question for her. No, he wouldn't sit at the head table.  
"Yeah, that's what people in the wedding party do." Jackson insisted.  
"He has to bring a date. The table will look weird if he doesn't bring a date." Lexie made up an excuse and immediately regretted it.  
"My mother isn't bringing a date -I hope. What about your dad?"  
"Midlife crisis is coming with him." Lexie muttered.  
"She's nice, Lex. She's actually really nice." Jackson tried to calm her down.  
"How can you be so chill about this?" Lexie wondered "She's younger than I am."  
"Because it's only one day and we are going to be married for the rest of our lives -and it won't matter who sat where on our wedding day, because we'll be married." He kissed her.  
"Your mother probably won't shut up about babies." Lexie smiled.  
"She's been calling you about that too?" Jackson chuckled.  
"I blocked her number on my work phone because of that." Lexie nodded.

* * *

Amelia followed James onto the parking lot. He had avoided her all day and she had tried to talk to him "James, I owe you an answer." Amelia sighed "This isn't easy for me."  
"Before you say the words, just be sure." James knew what she was about to tell him.  
"I can't. I can't marry you. I want you to be happy, that's why I can't do this to you. I love you too much to marry you. I know deep in my heart that we won't be happy. You have to stop waiting for me and just start living. I know I'm hurting you because I don't want to see you hurt worse. Here's your ring and now go, please go! You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved! I'm shattered and broken and your pieces, they are too complete to be able to keep mine together."  
"Thanks!" James nodded and walked away.

* * *

2 weeks before the wedding

"Oh, you are talking to me again?" Derek looked at Meredith when she walked into his office.  
"I need to talk to you, Derek. It's about Amelia." Meredith swallowed. "James proposed and she said no, but… I just feel like you should maybe check up on her."  
"You are concernced about my sister now?" he coughed "Four months ago you were at each other's throats."  
"And now I'm concerned." Meredith nodded "This happened before and ended in her turning up here -without a wanring. You wouldn't want to lose your new head of neurosurgery?"  
"What makes you think Amelia would be my choice?" Derek wondered.  
"She's you in younger and prettier." Meredith teased him.  
"Ugh, you know how to kick me." Derek breathed out.  
"She'd be a great choice." Meredith insisted.  
"You thought about the Brigham and ?" Derek wondered.  
"Yeah, I talked to Jackson's mom about some flower arrangements and she mentioned it, she said they'd be thrilled to have me -even when you arranged all of this." Meredith stated "I'm thinking about it."

* * *

Alex looked at his father. He was standing right in front of him and he couldn't run away in the hospital. "You left."  
"You made it pretty clear that I had to." His father nodded.  
"I was a kid. I only wanted to protect my mom and Amber and…" he insisted.  
"I know Alexander, but I could have changed. I didn't have to go down like this." He sighed.  
"I was glad when you were gone." Alex told him off "I didn't have to be afraid – not for my own health and not for mom's."  
"You did pretty good for yourself." Alex dad said as he looked at Alex in his scrubs.  
"So what have you been up to the past 15 years? Prison? Rehab?"Alex asked harshly.  
"Alex, I'm not a criminal and I'm not an alcoholic." His father insisted.  
"Your liver results tell me otherwise. You've been drinking a lot of alcohol for a very long time. Those results are only seen in people with a long history of alcohol abuse." Alex yelled.  
"Alex, you might not believe me, but I can assure you that I haven't had a drink in 10 years." His father insisted.  
"Look at me, Look at me." Alex said as George came in "Amber is trying to get to know you. I do care about Amber and I want to protect her, so look me in the eye and tell me again."  
"I haven't had a drink in 15 years. I didn't I tried to pick up the pieces." His father insisted.  
"I'll find out what's wrong with you, we'll have to do a few tests." George told Alex's father.

* * *

 _Baltimore 3 years and 6 months ago_

 _Amelia and James were back in her apartment after she had met his parents for the first time. "I'd say it went pretty well"he nodded.  
"You mean once I kept my mouth shut." Amelia rolled her eyes. They both knew that it had been a disaster.  
"Well, she promised to play nice, but you know how mothers are" James apologized.  
"I wasn't talking about her. I was talking about you. You cut me off." Amelia yelled at him.  
"I stopped her from asking you about things we haven't discussed yet."  
" It was like you didn't think that I had ideas about my own life. Or you didn't trust me to talk to your mother." They were at each other's throats.  
"I'm sorry if that's the way it came 's just my mother I don't trust" James yelled.  
"You know what? I will not be treated like a little child who needs to be silenced, all right? This is not working."Amelia huffed.  
"What are you talking about? Wait. Are you breaking up with me?" James wondered and stayed behind.  
"You need to go."Amelia insisted.  
"I'm not going anywhere. We're just having an argument here."  
"Go." Amelia repeated.  
"No."  
"Fine." Amelia said and left._

* * *

"Why did you call my brother on me. What's your fricking problem, Meredith?" Amelia yelled at Meredith in their living room.  
"It's… You are me – me before Derek -and in a situation like this…" Meredith looked at Amelia. She had told Derek because she had been concerned for her. "If theres's anything I can do, Amelia… "  
"You, Misses Mc Dreamy with the perfect Mckids and the perfect McHusband. So what can you do for me? What can you do for me, Meredith?" Amelia yelled "I didn't need that."  
"You're me." Meredith sighed and rolled her eyes.  
"What?" Amelia looked at her.  
"You're me before Derek." Meredith said and looked at Amelia, she swallowed and continued "I can be here for you. I know how to do this. I can be a trusted sister for you. Just how do you want to play this? If you need a shoulder to cry on, I have two. If you want to freak out, if you want to run, I'll drive the getaway car. Just let me know what you need. I'm here for you. I am your family, Amelia. I can be your person. Just tell me what you want to do."  
"What would you do, if I were you and he was Derek?" Amelia asked straight out.  
"I would get shit faced drunk and talk to him, oh well, that's what I did do anyway when my husband showed up here." Meredith remembered "but that isn't an option here. But I have another idea"

* * *

Callie had tried a hundred dresses and Mark was growing increasingly impatient. She was trying on dresses that didn't suit her style. "Sometimes you don't need the whole new poufy ball gown, you just need a simple a line. It's elegant and beautiful and …"  
"I don't even know why I agreed to be your date in the first place" Callie rolled her eyes.  
"Arizona is in surgery and I'm great company" Mark winked.  
"So, you are saying a plain dress?" Callie wondered.  
"I'm saying a simple a line is elegant and beautiful." Mark smiled and handed over one to her  
"Do you still love her?" Callie blarred out "I mean at one stage, you loved her and…"  
"That doesn't go away." Mark nodded. "and she'll walk down the aisle and I'll have to pretend to be happy for her."  
"Mark, I'm going to tell you what a very wise man told me once" Callie hugged him and whispered "If you love somebody, you tell them."

* * *

It was raining heavily and as it would have been way too cold, Amelia and Meredith stayed in the front seats of Meredith's car. Derek was in surgery and the kids were at daycare. "Derek and I used to do this. Before Chris and before everything. We used to drive here, have a bottle of wine and watch the ferryboats. He told me all about our wedding." Meredith started reminiscing.  
"Which was rash." Amelia nodded.  
"That's an understatement." Meredith giggled.  
"He told mom that kissing you felt like he had never kissed another woman before." AAmelia said in awe "I had this once."  
"What happened?" Meredith wondered.  
"He overdosed in a hotel room while I was sleeping next to him." Amelia stated calmly. Saying it out loud, she realized how long it had been.  
"And you tried to overdose after that as well. He told me about this once." Meredith bit her lips.  
"I went to rehab, I found out I was pregnant, Derek doesn't know." Amelia paused "I went to college, I had the baby, I gave it up for adoption, I stayed safe, whenever there was someone who made me feel remotely like I had that day -before Ryan overdosed- when we had decided to do that one last line and get sober afterwards, I ran. James was the first guy who kept pushing and he was -he just wasn't so bad."  
"But you can't marry someone because he isn't so bad." Meredith nodded.  
"You can't, right." Amelia sank into her seat  
"But that doesn't mean that there isn't anybody who cares for you. Owen cares about you a lot"  
"You must hate that I…" Amelia paused "he's your best friend's ex."  
"They weren't right for each other." Meredith looked at Amelia. She knew deep down in her heart that Owen and Cristina would make each other miserable for the rest of their lifes.  
"I have to tell mom. Mom liked James" Amelia sighed.  
"I can call your mom." Meredith offered.  
"Oh, she'll think you are pregnant again, because apparently that's the only time you ever bother to talk to her." Amelia loved "And I have to tell her that James proposed again and I said no again."  
"I can call her" Meredith insisted.  
"You don't have to do that" Amelia declined. "For the first time in a long time, I'm happy. I'm free and it feels good."

* * *

1 week before the wedding 

Amelia walked up to Derek and looked at her patient. They were taking him to surgery -a surgery she had been meant to do. "Why are you taking my patient to surgery?" she looked at her brother  
"Because you were late." Derek suggested "He was scheduled for 9.30"  
"I'm here now." Amelia insisted. It was 9.25.  
"Well, Amelia it's too late. You can't do as you please." Derek told her in a harsh tone that usually should only be used to lecture Christopher and Zola "I'm your boss and I'm still pissed that… "  
"… that what? That I chose my own happiness over James?" she wondered.  
"I'm pissed that I thought you'd be capable of living a happy life." Derek yelled  
"You are married to someone like that. Meredith said she was me before you." Amelia looked at him "So just wait for me to find a you, not a literal you because I already have a you and you and I would be against the law. But until I find that, you have no right to judge me."  
"You talked to Meredith about us?" Derek wondered. Meredith had never mentioned it.  
"No, Meredith and I talked about me and James -and about Ryan."  
"Ryan? God dammit, Amelia, move on, he was a junkie." Derek sighed.  
"So was I. -and I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment to you, but that's just who I am." Amelia yelled and ran away.

* * *

Finding herself came in waves. One minute she was fine and thought of herself as super heroine, the next minute she was full of self doubt and the fight with her brother had just sent her down that path. She had gone through her stuff and had erased every memory of James, of any boyfriend. "Please. I can't what's wrong with me?" Amelia was in tears.  
"I'll take it from here." Owen said and send away his room mate.  
"Glad you're okay. I was worried. You are okay?" Owen looked at her. Her mascara had left several black clouds around her eyes, her hair was ripped apart.  
"Do I deserve someone?" she wondered.  
"Amelia, of course." He hugged her.  
"I mean, why why do you… Because I don't know if James and I can't work or if don't want us to." She said incoherently "I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a recovering addict with a dump truck full of baggage, right? And the worst tragedy that has ever struck James is having to put down his golden retriever."  
"You're not giving him any credit. He's an E. R. doctor, right? He's he's seen things." Owen tried to cheer her up and respect her boundaries.  
"Sure. Other people's tragedies. That does not prepare someone to live with crazy day in and day out. You know that." Amelia insisted. He knew it was true, even if you witnessed other people's tragedies everyday, you weren't any more prepared for your own than they were.  
"That is not the point." He insisted.  
"I don't think you're seeing the point." Amelia was still in tears. She had cried all night.  
"You've been so strong this past year. And there's no doubt in my mind that if you wanted to work through this, you could. But what you're not seeing, and what I didn't really see until recently is, none of it matters." Owen hugged her "The petty things that we argue about and wish we could change about the other person, it you want to know the only thing that matters? If someone will hold your hand when you have cancer.I mean look at Richard. So what was that fight really about?"  
"All the men I care about die." Amelia sobbed.  
"My people live a long time. I have an Uncle who's…"  
"I had a child, Owen. I had a child when I was 18." Amelia hadn't told anyone about this. It had been her own secret, but it felt great to finally share it with someone.

* * *

"What's the matter with you Alex?" Meredith wondered when she saw him in the resident locker room.

"My dad is here." He looked at Meredith

"What?" Meredith knew that he hadn't seen his dad in forever. She knew he had threatened to beat the crap out of him if he ever turned up again.

"Amber called him and now he pretends to be some poster book father." Alex sighed.

"What if he actually changed?" Meredith wondered.

"I know him. He's still the same asshole he was 15 years ago. He'll disappoint her, she's too young to be disappointed by him. I'm afraid she's too fragile to be disappointed by him. I'm afraid he's going to destroy her. She doesn't remember the way things were when he was around. The last time…I almost killed him. It's his fault I have commitment issues." Most of the crappy things that had happened in his life where his father's fault.

"Does he look a little bit like you?" Meredith wondered. "I think he was at the house this morning"

"You've seen him?" Alex wondered.

"I dropped off a few things for the wedding before I came." Meredith nodded.

"Wonderful DNA… a violent alcoholic or a shizophrenic I'm just blessed." Alex sighed "You can't wash off the stink. What happens if I actually kill him this time?"

"You changed Alex. You are not 14 and for what it's worth I think Amber needs to get to know him. I hardly remember anything about my dad. You always wonder what could have been – even if he's a screw up of epic proportion"

"Thanks." Alex nodded.

"Any time, just call me when you need to talk to someone. I'm an expert on daddy issues" Meredith sighed.

"I shouldn't have taken her in." Alex looked at Meredith "She deserves a proper parent. Someone that…"

"Nothing that happened was your fault Alex." Meredith insisted.

* * *

Mark was following Lexie to the parking lot. She turned around and looked at him. He was trying to say something, when Lexie found the words she wanted to say. "You have to stop. You gotta stop talking to me and checking on me and talking to my boyfriend. You make me nervous, so nervous that I think I'm in love with you, so nervous I think that I'm always going to love you, but I don't want to love you. I want to be happy, and Jackson makes me happy. And if you keep pulling at me, I'll run to you."  
"You're right, I'm sorry." Mark nodded  
"You got what you wanted you wanted. You have a family, you have a daughter and her mother is so beautiful, I couldn't compete, so please just let me have what I wanted."  
"I said you're right. I told Avery I was letting you go. Did he tell you that part?"  
Lexie nodded "Yes, it's paternalistic and weird."  
"I'm letting you go, Lexie. That means you've got to walk away." Mark told her.  
"How can I do this if I see you there, standing at the end of the aisle?" Lexie wondered. "I should go. I'm really happy for you. You seem happy and I'm happy, it's amazing."  
"I am. I have everything I've always wanted...almost." Mark nodded and watched her walk away.

* * *

 _When we strike that match, we like to think we can control the burn. We like to think we have any control at all. That fire is wildly difficult to contain and just when you think you've extinguished the blaze, it reignites. It sucks in air and burns hotter and brighter than ever_ _'I love you' there they are, the words that some deep dark part of us always wants to hear. It's funny Once you actually hear those words out loud, you don't want to hear them. Sometimes it's better things stay the way they were. But don't wait, the time will never be ‚just right'. You have to take a risk. Start where you stand and work with whatever you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along._

* * *

"Hey, what's with hugging O'Malley?" Amelia walked into the ER and saw Owen and George.  
"I slept. Amelia, last night I slept. For the first time, I slept." Owen smiled.  
"And, I dunno... hugging O'Malley because you slept?" she smiled as she looked at him.  
"Oh no, I hugged O'Malley 'cause he's got great news which I'll let him tell you. But, yeah, I guess, maybe, yeah I hugged him because I slept. And, that's because of you." He complimented her "Because you came with me to see my Mom, and I slept... and I slept without nightmares. That's not a small thing Amelia. That... that is everything. I can be a better man. I can be a better man for you. I hope, you know if you'll let me. I can be a better man with you. No, don't say anything. Just, think about it ok. Ok." She kept looking at him while he kept talking. When his lips touched hers, she didn't even realize it. But it felt right.


	59. Chapter 59

_Enjoy ;) Let the shippers ship...  
_

* * *

 **Chapter 59**

 _Surgeons don't compromise. We defy death, we exceed perfection. We operate for seventeen hours straight if we have to. We aren't built to settle, but that doesn't mean we won't._

* * *

Amelia and Derek sat on the porch. He was sipping on a bottle of beer while she was enjoying the view "It's cold out here." Amelia sighed. She hoped they'd take their conversation inside.  
"It's quiet out here." He nodded.  
"Mm." She tried to start a conversation, but she knew her brother was as good in avoiding an issue as she was "Ever since you've been back, you guys haven't been talking. It's quiet in there too."  
"You okay? You haven't been out here in a while" Derek looked at her  
"What do you mean?" she wondered.  
"I didn't want to ask you, and I'm not supposed to big-brother you. And you don't need me to." He sighed "There was a robbery, two shootings, and you declared two men dead. I kept thinking about Dad. I wanted to know if you're okay." Amelia nodded.  
"Did Mom tell you I went to go see her?" he wondered.  
"No. Wow." Amelia mumbled and laughed "How did that go?"  
"She said I was tired and miserable, which I was. Told me to get it together. No sympathy. Oh, no, never. She said, "Derek, take a good, hard look at your life. If it's not working, shut up and fix it."" Derek and Amelia laughed. It was easy for both of them to picture their mother giving this piece of advice. "Amy, I've been missing out on everything in my life. Meredith just shut me out. I mean, I have been watching my kids grow up on a computer for two weeks last month-and it'd be like that if Mer stays here. I don't want to miss my family. I don't want to miss another second. But Meredith wants me to. You've been awfully quiet."  
"I think I'm falling in love with Owen Hunt." Amelia whispered "And I'm really afraid that it's gonna destroy me."  
"It wouldn't be love if it didn't."

* * *

"I'm fine."Meredith looked at Mark "I have labelled all of those envelopes. Lexie is driving me insane with this rehearsal dinner non-sense"  
"You haven't been home." Mark insisted "Derek called me"  
Meredith nodded. She thought it was sweet that Derek still tried to check on her, but at the same time she was still annoyed at him "I needed time to think. I still do."  
"About you?" Mark wondered.  
"About us." Meredith nodded "No, about who I want to be. He's… I get lost in him, but I don't feel lost. I feel at ease and at home. I'm mad at him and all I keep worrying about is that he might have left me tomorrow, that he packed his stuff and moved our kids to Boston. I resent him for pulling some strings so I can work in Boston."  
"I have to go; Lexie is waiting for me." Mark looked at his phone.  
"Lexie?" Meredith wondered. She had a bad feeling in her stomach.  
"She's scrubbing in with me and Derek." He said "Patient is prepped. And while you do some kind of secretarial work, we actually cut into patients."

* * *

Meredith looked at the stacks with envelopes and wedding announcement. It had been something Jackson's mother had insisted on. "'Grey-Avery' certainly has a wonderful ring to it" Meredith nodded "Oh, my mom would have loved that"  
"so does 'Grey Shepherd'" Jackson said "She was proud when you got married, wasn't she?"  
"it's Grey. I'm a Grey. If you are born a Grey you stay one until the end of your days."  
"Lexie won't." Jackson corrected her. "Have you talked to Derek?"  
"Derek hasn't talked to me. He's off with Sanders today… golf…" Meredith sighed "It's like a midlife crisis. He wants a new job and a new city and… You don't seem to be nervous or excited."  
"Are you supposed to feel that way?" Jackson said.  
"I don't know." Meredith admitted "I just figured normal people felt as excited about this stuff than we do about surgery."  
"You are married." Jackson reminded her  
"That's a different story" Meredith mumbled "My mother died, my friend took me to Vegas to forget about it and I got drunk and woke up married -to a guy I had never seen before. So it's a different story"

Jackson had just finished the last wedding announcement when there was a ring on the door bell. "Don't talk about me like I'm an old lady!" Jackson's mother insisted when he greeted her at the door. He took her coat and led her into the kitchen.  
"Mom, what are you doing here?" he asked "You weren't scheduled to come in until tonight"  
"I want to meet my daughter in law. You can't hide her from me forever." She insisted and walked over to Meredith "You must be Lexie Grey."  
"Oh no, I'm Meredith, I'm her sister." Meredith shook her hand.  
"You are the spitting image of your mother." She nodded "I wonder if Lexie inherited any…"  
"My mother isn't Lexie's mother. She's my half-sister." Meredith looked to the ground. The look on Catherine's face let it seem like this was something she needed to apologize for.  
"Oh, that's a pity." She nodded and turned around "So where's the blushing bride?"  
"Lexie is upstairs" Jackson answered and before he was able to finish his sentence, she had left "but I don't think it's… a good opportunity. Mom, Lexie is in…" They heard heard a scream for upstairs before he was able to finish "the shower."  
"Should I check on her?" Meredith wondered "It'd be the sisterly think. I should see how she's doing. Your mom is intense."  
"I know." Lexie nodded.

* * *

 _Leaving the church after a wedding was supposed to be the most wonderful thing on earth. It wasn't.  
"Don't get drunk, Lexie" Mark sighed and looked at the woman next to him. Her make-up was ruined and her hair messed up. "You don't have to."  
"How do you know?" she wondered. After all she had just left the church and would be stuck with the decision for the rest of her life.  
"You'll be alright." He tried to cheer her up, but she didn't listen.  
"I'm not getting drunk. I'm just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine." She sang with her tipsy voice. According to the driver the girls had shared two bottles on the way to the church.  
"Don't get drunk… don't get drunk" Mark insisted and waited until she handed over the bottle to him. She had had more than enough. He knew she was avoiding her feelings, but who wasn't on a day like this.  
"Want to go for a ride? Want to ride through town" she looked at Mark innocently like Bambi.  
"Sure" he nodded and took her hand. "Everything was going to be fine." _

* * *

"She walked in on me naked." Lexie rambled while walking through her room "I was in the shower and she walked in. I was barely able to crap a towel. How embarrassing is that?"  
"It's going to be fine, Lexie. Everything is going to be fine." Meredith tried to calm her down  
"She wants me to work for the foundation once I'm finished with my residency, she wants me to go to cocktail receptions and fundraisers and she wants our kids to attend board meetings and she told me all of this while I was wet and wrapped into a towel." Lexie didn't bother to listen to Meredith's lousy attempts.  
"It's going to be fine, Lex." Meredith yelled.  
"She's intimidating. I'm afraid of Jackson's mother." Lexie told her "and so are you"  
"Calm down, Lex and dry your hair." Meredith said "You wouldn't want to be sick tomorrow."

Meredith opened the door. "Hey Molly" She said "How was the flight?"  
"Hey Meredith, I'm so glad we finally get to meet."Molly smiled and hugged her sister.  
"Outside of the hospital" Meredith added and tried to act as natural as possible.  
"Yeah, I almost forgot about that." Laura nodded "Where are Zola and Christopher? I'm looking forward to meet them."  
"They are in the yard, Laura looks great." Meredith smiled.  
"Yeah, she's a happy little girl." Molly smiled.  
"Who's that mommy?" Laura wondered and looked at Meredith.  
"It's your aunt Meredith, darling." Molly explained "I told you about her and your aunt Lexie is going to get married."  
"Hey, Merdet." Laura smiled.  
"Hello sweetie. Nice to meet you. Do you wanna go and play outside?" Meredith wondered.  
"Can I mommy?" Laura looked up to her mother seeking for approval.  
"Sure." Molly nodded.  
After they had sent off the kids, they sat down in the kitchen "How are Christopher and Zola?"  
"Fine, they couldn't be better. Honestly, things couldn't be better at the moment. Everyone is happy and getting married and Christopher and Zola are looking forward to meeting their aunt and cousin." Meredith tried to put up a fake smile.  
"I still can't believe Lex is getting married. The last one of the Grey sisters finally gave in. So what are we going to do for Lexie's bachelorette?" Molly wondered.  
"I never realized she wanted to have one." Meredith admitted.  
"She needs one. I'll think of something and you just call all of her friends." Molly smiled.  
"We are going to the bridal boutique at 2pm in case you want to visit dad before that." Meredith informed Molly.  
"Thanks, but he picked me up from the airport. We already met." Molly nodded.  
"It was nice meeting you, I'll see if I can find Christopher and Zola. And I'm going to take you outside while your mom gets to have a moment of peace to herself."

* * *

"Who was that?" Cristina wondered when she walked into the kitchen.  
"Little Grey's little sister. Micro Grey or whatever." Amber said.  
"The kid looks just like Mer. I never knew they had another sister." Alex nodded.  
"You slept with Lexie for months! How can you possibly not know this?" Cristina looked at Alex "Are you retarded?"  
"I don't remember every tiny detail about every conversation we had. Looking forward to wearing those bridesmaid's dresses again?" he teased Cristina.  
"Dream on, Evil spawn!"  
"I like that name. What am I?" Amber wondered.  
"2.0. Evil spawn 2.0" Alex mumbled.  
"I guess my 'trying to murder me' brother is the good one?" Amber looked unconvinced.  
"Aron tried to kill you?" Cristina had never heard why Amber had come to Seattle.  
"Yeah, but he's fine now. He's on meds. And I forgave him." She swallowed "I talked about it in therapy."  
"Why are you here anyway?" Alex looked at Amber.  
"Dr. Sloan wants me to babysit Maria during the ceremony and I thought that my brother might want to see me on one of his few nights off." She smiled "I missed you."

* * *

"So… you haven't brought up the offer. I'm surprised" Derek admitted when they reached the 18th hole. The sun was about to set and they had to hurry to finish up.  
"I told you… this wasn't a business meeting. All I wanted to do was to show you how beautiful it is to be stay here." He said. "It's beautiful"  
"You are from Boston." Derek reminded him "Meredith used to live there. It's not like I'm asking her to move somewhere she doesn't know anything."  
"Yet, I like Seattle." Sanders smiled.  
"All the rain" Derek sighed "and Boston has ferryboats too."  
"I have conjoined twins" Sanders offered. "It's an interesting case, I need a neurosurgeon, a peds surgeon and few residents"  
"You might want to include Mark" Derek suggested "The last two he separated – you wouldn't know where the scar was. My sister can do the neuro part. We've done it before. Just let her and her resident fly to Boise."  
"Well, she might not be there when the surgery comes up."  
"She hasn't accepted your fellowship offer?" Derek was surprised.  
"She's still thinking about it" Sanders nodded "It'd be a pity to lose her."  
"Well, you might have Meredith"  
"I doubt it"

* * *

While Meredith was away with Cristina, Molly, April and Lexie for Lexie's bachelorette, Derek stayed at home and took care of the kids. After weeks of commuting between Boston and Seattle he was glad to have a weekend without the stress of flying across the country and not having to work at the same time. "I wanna hear a story" Zola insisted "Mommy and auntie Amy always tell me stories before I sleep"  
Derek nodded. Christopher had been asleep for more than an hour, but Zola was harder to please. He sat down on her bed and put on one of the princess crowns and began to tell Zola the story of princess Meredith who was visiting a foreign land and was conquered by prince Derek. Zola giggled after every sentence, but by the time Derek had found his princess in her kingdom again, she had fallen asleep. He kissed her forehead and turned off the light in her room. The house felt empty without her. He didn't know how to sleep alone. He didn't want to sleep alone, but tonight he had to.

* * *

After having checked on her son, Catherine Avery went to the hospital. Seattle Grace was one of the best teaching hospitals on the West Coast and a wonderful pool for talents she might hire in a year or two. "The mother of the groom" Sanders greeted her "Seems like the who is who of surgery has come in to see your son get married."  
"I invited a few people" Catherine nodded "and I think Alexandra is going to work for the foundation, we need a new representative and it's her responsibility as an Avery, but I don't know her enough to be certain that she can do it"  
"May I interrupt?" Mark wondered "I'm Mark Sloan. I'm your son's…"  
"Best man. I know" Catherine nodded "What do you want?"  
"Lexie can do it. Lexie can do anything" Mark insisted "You don't have to question her abilities. Lexie is a force of nature. Some days she just blows into a storm."  
"I noticed that she's impulsive." Catherine nodded "You don't seem to mind"  
"I do not run from it. Her passion, the fury. It's like standing in the OR, looking at the damage and trying to understand the chaos." Mark nodded "She's like that. Lexie is very talented and intelligent. And passionate. She's the greatest woman anyone could ask for."  
"You don't seem to be afraid of those freak-outs. They are irritating." Catherine stated  
"I don't have to seek shelter. I just stand there and I know I have to feel it."

* * *

The next morning was even busier. The hairdresser had left when Meredith came into Lexie's room "Where's Molly?" she wondered.  
"She's checking on the weather." Lexie said while thunder was rumbling "It's raining. Didn't you notice?"  
"What's wrong? What's happening? What can I do?" Lexie laughed and looked up to the ceiling. "What can you do? What can you do? What That That is amazing. That is an amazing question. What can you do?"  
"Lexie." Meredith interrupted her.  
"Meredith, I am flipping out here. I'm wearing a wedding gown. There is a good and decent man in there who loves me and is expecting to marry me, and I can't tell if I am marrying because I love him back or because I just..." Lexie paused and took a deep breath "And I don't know what I'm doing. And there is no one here with me. There is no one here to tell me to quit or get me down the aisle or …help me. And you are rooting for the other guy. You told me to go and be with Jackson, and then you turned on me, and now you are not on my side. And we both know you never wanted to get to know me, but you are stuck with me. So here I am in a wedding gown on the happiest fricking day of my life. So what can you do for me? What can you do for me, Meredith?"  
Meredith sighed "Lexie, Molly is here and your dad is here and I'm here. Everyone is here. You don't have to do this alone. I can be here for you. I know how to do this. I can be a trusted sister for you. It's true, I never wanted to get to know you, but I'm glad I did anyway. Just how do you want to play this? Do you need me to tell you you're a beautiful bride and kick your ass down that aisle? You're a beautiful bride. Turn around. I'll start kicking. If you need a shoulder to cry on, I have two. If you want to freak out and call it off, if you want to run, I'll drive the getaway car. Just let me know what you need. I'm here for you. I am your family, Lexie. I'm your sister. Just tell me what you want to do."

On their way to the car they met Molly who had problems catching up with them "What are you doing?"  
"We're running." Meredith grabbed her.  
"Oh! - Where are we running?" she wondered.  
"Doesn't matter. Let's go!" Lexie said and ran to Meredith's car that was parked right across the entrance.  
"So many people. All those people!" Molly rambled as she looked at the guest lists Meredith had left on the passenger seat of her car.  
"Okay, stop it." Meredith looked at her and grabbed the list.  
"And the food! Oh, my All that food." Molly kept rambling.  
"Stop." Meredith yelled. "Don't do that. The food doesn't matter. Lexie's what matters."  
"Right. Okay." Molly nodded "What happened?"  
"Nothing happened." Lexie said. She was having second thoughts, but she had had those before.  
"What's wrong with Jackson?" Molly wondered.  
"Nothing's wrong with Jackson." Lexie mumbled "He's perfect."  
"Then why are we doing this?" Molly looked at both of them. 'Maybe he just wasn't perfect for her' Meredith thought to herself.

* * *

Owen sat on his couch and looked at his suit. 'Another wedding' he thought to himself and wondered when it was ever going to be his turn. He looked at the news cast and changed the channel when he heard the doorbell. "Why are you here?" Owen looked at the person in front of him.  
"Can I come in? I didn't know who could help me, so I came her." Amelia asked. Her clothes were soaking wet "I can't zip up my dress. I have to get ready for that stupid wedding which I don't know why I'm invited to and I…"  
"Fine, I'll do it." Owen nodded.  
"You are not fighting this?" she wondered "We kissed and you stopped talking to me. Your lips touched mine and you ran away from me ever since. You are not fighting this?"  
"No, you are supposed to" Owen whispered and his lips touched hers again. The dress fell to the ground.

"Sh We really need to leave if we're gonna even make an appearance." Amelia whispered when she looked at the clock.  
"one more minute." Owen begged  
"You said that 20 minutes ago." Amelia insisted, but came back to snuggle underneath a blanket anyway "We're not gonna make the wedding, are we?" she laughed.  
"They'll understand. We'll get them a really nice present." Owen whispered and kissed her forehead.  
"Right? Look at you." Her fingers ran through his hair and she kissed him.  
"Look at you" he nodded and looked straight into her eyes.

* * *

The groom and his best man were preparing in a suite. Mark had paid for everything. "I guess now's the moment for life changing advice." He joked while he put on his box tie.  
"Do you have a minute?" someone knocked the door. Mark put away the tie and opened it. "What are you doing here?"  
"Do you have a minute?" Derek wondered.  
"Sure" Mark nodded "Are you coming to tell me that you are breaking up with me?"  
"I need to tell you something before the wedding" Derek sighed "I understand that you can't choose who you fall in love with, but you can choose to be honest. You still have feelings for Lexie."  
"It's too late." Mark spat out "She's getting married, poufy right dress married"  
"She deserves to know before she enters into this lifelong commitment." Derek insisted "I wouldn't have married Addison if I had known that you were madly in love with her at the time. I wouldn't have."  
"You got divorced. We were both so in love with the idea of being in love"  
"and I shouldn't have gotten married in the first place." Derek insisted. "Do you know that it's the best man's job to drive the get-away car?"  
"It is?"  
"Mer said so" Derek nodded. "Lexie deserves to know before the ceremony."  
The door opened and Jackson was looking at them "Has anyone on you heard where Lexie, Meredith and Molly went? Thatcher was looking for them and they weren't in the bridal suite."

* * *

Lexie's premature escape had led them to a petrol station. "Tap it and let it settle and then tap it some more. You get more that way." Meredith tried to instruct Lexie while she was trying to fill her slushy.  
"Why am I doing this? Why did you make me do this?" Lexie rambled "Why the hell would you make me run?"  
"I didn't make you run. You wanted to run." Meredith insisted.  
"You dangled the carrot. You dangled it because you didn't want this wedding to happen, so you dangled." Lexie rambled "You and Mark… "  
"I didn't dangle anything." Meredith set her straight "You're not a victim here. I presented you with a menu of options. You chose to run. You wanted to run."  
"We can always go back, Lex" Molly tried to calm her down "It's been only 5 minutes since the ceremony was supposed to start."  
"You're right. You're right." Lexie started to breathe heavily "Why am I marrying Jackson? I don't even know. Shouldn't I know? Shouldn't I know on my wedding day?"  
"Probably." Meredith nodded.  
"Mer." Molly looked at her in disbelief.  
"Lexie, you should know." Meredith insisted. "But I didn't know either and see how that turned out"  
"We have to go back. They are waiting for us. Dad is waiting for us. They are all waiting for us." Molly insisted "He's been calling me a few times and we really have to go."

* * *

Everything was going to be fine. The rain kept pouring, but this wasn't something they weren't used to. The room looked like it had been taken straight out of a wedding magazine. Catherine must have spent a fortune on those, Meredith thought to herself. Meredith cringed when she noticed that the intro for the wedding party was playing. It'd be Molly and the kids and after that it'd be her followed by her father. At least the kids seemed to enjoy themselves she thought when she looked at Zola and Maria.

"Christopher seems to enjoy this." Addison whispered into Derek's ear.  
"He's surrounded by cute girls. He should enjoy this." Derek smirked. "Maria looks so much like you. I saw her at Meredith's old house this morning when I picked up the kids."  
"Yeah, the hair and the way she moves." Addison nodded "That's all me"  
"She has the Sloan nose though." Derek teased her. They both smiled because Mark couldn't hear them and they both knew how proud he was of his nose.  
"He's in love with the bride, isn't he?" Addison wondered. Derek knew it was true, but had been unaware of the fact that Addison knew. "When we were in LA, he was distant. He wasn't even trying and when I got someone else he threw a fit and…"  
"This isn't the place to discuss this" Derek whispered "Meredith, I want to look at her." His eyes followed her every step, her every move.

* * *

"Thank God we finally got here" the minister laughed when Lexie and Jackson stood before him. The planner had outdone herself, but most people were glad that they wouldn't have to wait another forty minutes and everyone in the hall laughed. "Jackson and Lexie, today you are surrounded by your friends and family, all of whom have gathered here to witness your marriage and to share in the joy of this special occasion. Today, as you join yourselves in marriage, there is a vast and unknown future stretching out before you. The possibilities and potentials of your married life are great; and now falls upon your shoulders the task of choosing your values and making real your dreams. Through your commitment to each other, may you grow and nurture a love that makes both of you better people, a love that continues to give you great joy, and also a passion for living that provides you with energy and patience to face the responsibilities of life." He started and began to tell a goofy story about what they had done on their first date, about the maid of honour who had known the groom way before she had known her own sister and about the ways that everything in life was just meant to happen.

 _"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot._ _You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."_

"Alexandra and Jackson, the time has come to forget all the stress of planning this day and simply enjoy your friends and family who have gathered to spend this day with you. This group of loved ones will, likely, never be together in the same place again. Through quiet reflection and nostalgia, think about how each person has touched your life and why they are here with you today." The minister said and Lexie couldn't take her eyes off Mark who was standing right next to Jackson. To anyone in the audience it must have seemed like she was looking at Jackson, but she wasn't.

The words echoed in Mark's mind. "A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." The love you feel for one another cannot be hidden. The minister continued "Do you who know and care for Alexandra and Jackson give them your blessings now as they enter into this new relationship and do you promise in the days and years ahead to give them your deepest love, understanding, and support during both good times and bad? If so, please say "We do."  
"Instead they put it on its stand." Mark looked at Lexie. "and it gives light to everyone" April bit her lips. Both Mark and April got up at the same time and demanded them to stop. "I love you Jackson" and "I love you Lexie" could be heard simultaneously. "and if you love me too" they stopped and noticed everyone's eyes were on them. "you won't do this".

* * *

"We don't have to do this" Lexie whispered and looked at a shocked Jackson. He nodded absently minded and looked at April. "We don't have to get married" He had no eyes for his mother in the front row who was lost for words for the first time in her life. All of a sudden Lexie started to run and grabbed Mark's hand. Everyone was frozen and just watched them leave. "I hope the car is parked" she told Mark once they had left the chapel  
"Right at the gate" Mark interrupted her with a smirk "Perfect getaway car, but let's take the limousine instead, Grey has the key for my car, we can travel in style"  
"This is crazy" Lexie sighed when she closed the door behind herself.  
"No, this is something I should have done a long time ago" he said and kissed her before she started to cry.

At the same time Jackson was still standing in front of the altar. Nobody dared to move or say a word. Suddenly April moved and grabbed his hands. "Where are we going?" Jackson wondered.  
"Wherever we want to go." April said. They ran and Meredith watched them, Molly looked at them in disbelief and the kids had started crying. This would be ranked number one on the list of truly horrible weddings, but it'd be a memorable one – because people always do remember the disasters.  
After they had driven a few minutes Jackson started to laugh "My mother is going to kill me."  
"I bet she's trying to call me, someone is anyway."

* * *

Her father had just broken down. Alex had told her about all the times that he had picked up their dad from the ground in a bar, but this time was different. He had been short of breath before he had collapsed on the front porch. Maria was in the living room and she had to avoid for her to get agitated. "Keep calm, Amber!" she whispered to herself "You know how to do that!". Dispatch told her that it'd be thirty minutes before the ambulance got there, but she started to check on her dad while Maria was watching Cinderella in the living room.  
When the ambulance arrived she called her brother "Calm down, Amber. Talk slowly! I can't understand a single word." He said after she had repeated the entire story in less than 20 seconds"  
"Dad! He broke down in front of me. What am I supposed to do?" she wondered "Maria is here"  
"Have you called an ambulance?" Alex wondered.  
"Yes, I'm not stupid, but Maria is here and I can't get Mark on the phone." She sighed "They said… that they'll take him to Seattle Grace."  
"Ask them to take you with them" Alex said "Maria can come with you. Amber, I'll be there – for you, not for him"

* * *

When disaster strikes, nobody really knows what to do. Most people just stayed after the bride and groom had left. Nobody knew what was going to happen and the guests had been left on their own. George sat in the chapel with Callie. "She's in DC- and I keep thinking I should have gone there with her. I don't want to leave Sofia. I don't want to watch her grow up on face time. This isn't supposed to be so hard. You shouldn't have to choose between the people you love." He rambled "and I can't ask you to move to…"  
"Sometimes you do, I mean look at this. The bride just ran off and so did the groom" Callie laughed "What a waste of perfectly good wedding food!"  
"I still love her Callie" George admitted "If she was getting married, I would be the guy that stood up and told her to leave with me"  
"I'm sure you can figure something out, George. If you stay here, you could see her during the holidays." Callie suggested "Or she comes back"  
"Or she doesn't and we have to put Sofia on a plane every other weekend? I don't want to uproot her". George rambled.  
"I heard you have an interview at ." Callie smiled "Boston is closer to DC. You could see her on the weekends."  
"and at the NHI and… I just hope that she figures out what she wants and… we go back to what we had in the beginning" he smiled.

* * *

 _The limousine stopped in front of Lexie's home. When you imagine what it's like to snatch away someone from the altar, you'd think that you'd have hot passionate sex on the car seat afterwards, but somehow it seemed like they were in shock. "I ruined it" Lexie cried. "I ruined it"  
"You haven't" Mark insisted and hugged her. Her eye make-up left stains on his shirt, but that was something he could deal with "You haven't. Lex - I'm still in love with you. I tried not be, but it didn't work and I don't want to sleep around. I want another chance. I'm in love with you."  
"Jackson, he's...Mark, I…" Lexie cried.  
"I know. All I'm saying is that you could have a husband. One day. I love you and I'll wait." He said "and now, all I'm going to do is to carry you inside your house"  
When they reached her room, she told Mark that she was ready to be on her own. She interrupted him when he tried to confess his love to her another time. "You don't have to say it." Lexie looked at Mark "You don't have to pretend."  
"I've always been in love with you. I'll always be in love with you. We're going to get married. You'll be an amazing surgeon. We'll have kids." Mark insisted "It's going to be beautiful"  
Lexie shook her head.  
"Oh Lexie, we could have had such a damned good time together" Mark sighed.  
"Yes, Isn't it pretty to think so?" Lexie said  
"Well, let's just shut up about it." Mark said and pressed his lips against hers, his tongue slowly moved into her mouth and for a moment it felt like he was on cloud nine. _

* * *

Owen and Amelia were blissfully unaware of what had happened at the wedding. "Woah... you are evil. You are the devil!" Owen fought off Amelia's pillow attack.  
"I am; I am the devil." She laughed and tickled him on the sides while trying to take off her shirt  
"Amelia, you know the rules." Owen stopped her  
"The rules are stupid."  
"Are you saying the shrink's stupid?" he wondered.  
"I'm saying she's a prude. She's prudey and misguided." Amelia giggled.  
"She wants us to get to know each other. She wants me to keep getting to know myself. She does not want me burying myself in you. If we start to have sex, I'll bury myself in you."  
"Wow. That is the worst thing I have ever heard. No, really, don't ever do drugs because you will never be able to stop." Amelia sighed.  
"We're not perfect. So what?" Owen wondered.  
"Just God! How do you do that? How are you always so calm and reasonable and logical and perfect?" Amelia rambled "Y-you're perfect. I am vomiting my life all over the place all the time, and nothing is ever wrong with you. You're Why are you always so perfect?"  
"I'm not. Okay? I'm not perfect, not even close." He said and stroke her hair back "I cheated on Cristina with you and when she caught us, I felt relived. I felt terrible for feeling it, but it was there. And I always knew on some level she'd leave me, and I wasn't ready to be hurt like that. So if she left me, she'd be gone after residency, but it wouldn't be so hard. It wouldn't be a choice, to walk away, to choose something else, to move to Switzerland and start another life. I was relieved that it was over with a minimum of damage, and I hate myself for that. So I am not perfect, Amelia. I can be selfish, and I can be scared, and I make things harder than I need to. I know I do. I make things hard for us."  
Amelia nodded and repeated something Owen had said before "We're not perfect. So what?"

* * *

When Meredith arrived, Alex had already run a full panel on his father. She was still wearing the maid of honour dress Lexie had wanted her to wear and it seemed way out of place in the middle of the surgical ward "What do you see?" Alex wondered and handed over the results of his fathers' blood test to Meredith.

"Somebody drowned their liver in Scotch" Meredith smirked. "Who is it?"

"He said he hasn't been drinking in 10 years." Alex sighed. "But I look at this and I just assume he's lying."

"What about drugs? Is he taking drugs?" Meredith wondered.

"I don't know." Alex admitted. He knew nothing about his dead.

Her friends' get together had caught Cristina's attention. "Why are you running labs on a 59-year-old anyway?" Cristina ripped the chart of Meredith's hands "Are the kids getting older these days?"

"They are my dad's. He broke down on the front porch when he wanted to meet Amber." Alex sighed. "He doesn't have insurance."

"So you decided to run some super-secret off the books tests anyway." Cristina smirked and looked at the test. "I like you"

"Don't tell anyone." Meredith looked at Cristina.

"You know I won't. You can come to me."

"I'll find out what's wrong with him and give him his meds and hopefully he'll disappear into the hell hole he came from. He asked Amber for money. Can you believe that?" Alex looked at Meredith who had ditched the aftermath of Lexie's wedding to answer Alex page "So I'm going to do the best I can here and try to figure out what's wrong with him."

"What are the symptoms?" she smiled and took a look at the chart.

"Very unspecific."

* * *

The day had been a nightmare and being paged to the ER at 9.30 pm was the icing on the cake -not the wedding cake which Meredith was supposed to be eating by now. Molly and her father were waiting in admission. This time she wasn't looking at the charts of someone who had seemingly drowned his liver in scotch, this time her father had drowned it in gin. "What's the matter?" she wondered. One of the nurses had paged her when she had noticed the name on the admission form.  
"He relapsed. I haven't ever seen him like this." Molly said while Thatcher tried to get up. "Daddy, daddy. Please." She begged and Meredith and Molly tried to stop him from leaving.  
"I'll take it from here. You can wait in the waiting room." Meredith smiled and looked at her father's hand.  
She led him into a trauma room and sat him down on a gurney "What's the matter with you? I know this is a crappy situation. You were supposed to make a speech and dance and have cake and now we don't know where they are, they aren't married and..." she stopped "It was the best thing that could have happened to them."  
"What do you mean?" he looked up "She was the daughter that I haven't screwed up with"  
"Your daughter has always been in love with the guy she left the church with." Meredith said "Mark is a good guy. Being with Jackson would have killed both of them. I would have been like you and Ellis." Good sort of, they just weren't right for each other.  
"I wanted to dance with her." Thatcher said. Meredith could tell from his breath that he was still intoxicated.  
"And you will be able to do that – just not today." Meredith sat down next to him "I'll give you a banana bag now. You should be fine. But you should better go to a meeting."  
"I hate that Molly saw me like that." Thatcher sighed when Meredith had almost left the room.  
"I can sit down if you want." She offered, but immediately regretted the offer when he accepted.  
"I'd like that." He nodded. Neither of them said anything for a while, but Thatcher finally found a way to start a conversation "You seemed distracted and you haven't talked to Derek all day."  
"Derek wants me to move to Boston with him." Meredith stated. "He even got me a job. Like your job at the university"  
"What's so bad about that?" Thatcher looked at her. "I liked my job. It was…"  
"You resented mom." Meredith reminded her. "It's the reason you didn't work out."  
"Derek is not your mother and you are not me. He cares for you more than he cares about anything." Thatcher tried to cheer her up "My happiness has never been on your mother's list of priorities, she left without a word, Derek got you a job because he wants you near him. He loves you."  
"He tends to forget that from time to time." Meredith mumbled.  
"But he always comes back." Thatcher insisted.  
"So you think I should go to Boston." Meredith nodded and got up.  
"He told me you said something about being extraordinary together rather than ordinary apart." Thatcher said "I think you want to go to Boston."  
"He told you?" Meredith wondered "How often do you talk?"  
"We talk from time to time." Thatcher said "He keeps me updated on my grandkids"  
"I'll come back to stitch you up" Meredith nodded and left the room.

* * *

 _When we follow our hearts, when we choose not to settle, it's funny. Isn't it? A weight lifts, the sun shines a little brighter, and for a brief moment, we find a little peace. Ask yourself: Are you happy or just comfortable?_

* * *

"April? Why? What happened? Why did you do that?" Jackson sat on his bed, his body was covered with the sheets  
"I love you, Jackson, I'm in love with you and I think that you are in love with me too." April kissed him and leaned over.  
Jackson sighed and when he noticed 56 missed calls and 400 messages on the phone, he remembered what he had successfully shut out the past six hours "You ruined my wedding, April!"  
"Don't you think that the bride running away with Sloan played a little part in that too? Don't blame me!" April misread his intention and teased him.  
"I don't blame you, April. I'm relieved! I'm happy that I don't have to spend the rest of my life with anybody. I can live my own life. Thank you April! You are the best friend I ever had. Thank you!" he smiled "Want to go again"  
"I love you, Jackson." April smiled "I love you."  
This took Jackson out of his comfort zone. She had kissed him before, but he had always thought that it had been an innocent flirtation. "You love me." He nodded.  
"I love you!" April said "And… oh my God, we had sex -and I'm not married and… it was…"  
"You did this because you love me, not because you thought I was making a mistake?" Jackson looked at her "You tried to sacrifice my happiness over yours?"  
"Well, I did think you were going to make a mistake because I think you are in love with me." April whispered into his ears playfully "and I'm really tipsy."  
"I'm… I'm… I have to go. I need to think…" he said and grabbed the bathrobe in the closet.  
"I love you, Jackson. Why can't you see it?" she held on to him "I want to kiss you and I never want to stop talking to you and I want to wake up next to you. I want you." April insisted.  
"Go! Go now! Do you know what I want, April? I want you to leave me alone! Just leave me alone!" Jackson yelled and kicked against the fridge in his hotel room.


	60. Chapter 60

**Chapter 60**

* * *

 _Uncontrollable bleeding. Acidosis. Cold. We all know what the combination means, we call it the triad of death. The point of no return, it's the moment in the OR where you turn to damage control. You stop. You step back. You let the body rest and see if you find a solution to the chaos that's happening inside._

* * *

"What's up Yang`?" Alex scrolled at Cristina.  
"I examined your dad." She sighed and sat down next to him. She had found out that he had congestive hepatopathy and it was something Alex had to know.  
"You did what? I never asked you to." He said.  
"I know what's wrong with him." Cristina said.  
"I don't want to know." Alex got up.  
"Believe me you do." Cristina screamed as Alex left the room. 'What a day it had been!' Cristina thought to herself. Lexie, Jackson, Mark and April were MIA and Meredith was in the ER with her father.

* * *

Alex was looking at the babies in the maternity ward. "What's the matter, Alex?" George wondered. He knew that Meredith loved to come up here whenever she felt sad. Alex wanted to get away – but his father's presence had haunted him ever since Amber had tried to reach out to him.  
"You know what's the matter, Bambi. Everything's the matter." Alex was trying not to cry.  
"I'm not Bambi. Cristina said it's something about your dad. You refused to listen to her when she …" George tried to do the right thing. Cristina had paged him.  
"She was going to tell me that he's a liar and an alcoholic." Alex muttered.  
"She wasn't." George said and neither one said a word when suddenly one of the alarms went off. They rushed in and started to examine the new-born as George continued to tell Alex about his father "She found a minor heart defect that caused this. It's easy to fix, just a small procedure."  
"So fix him." Alex muttered "She feels like she's God, so she can do it."  
"It's genetic Alex. You might have it." George sighed. "We have to get you checked. It's… "  
"That's the reason she tried to talk to me?" Alex asked "We have to get this one to the NICU. Page Arizona Robbins"  
"It certainly wasn't for your charisma and manners." George smiled "I'm always surprised how someone as douchy as you can be such an amazing paediatric surgeon."

* * *

A few days later…

Meredith and Derek lay next to each other when their alarm went off. They had slept the entire night and the kids had slept throughout the whole night, which was as close to a miracle as Lexie and Jackson running off.  
"I'll let you decide." Derek mumbled when he woke up next to Meredith.  
"Why? Why now?" she smiled and looked at him a little hesitant.  
"I thought about it." Derek smiled and she wanted to hit him with one of the pillows behind her because he knew how hard it was to resist his smile.  
"You thought about it?" she looked at him.  
"I did." He nodded. "And I decided that I'll let you decide. And you don't look happy about it."  
"We've been fighting about this for weeks and now you just decide that you'll pass on the offer." Meredith admitted.  
"That's not what I said. I said that it's your decision." Derek insisted. "You have a couple of job interviews and you'll decide what you want to do after all of them"  
"So, you want me to be the bad guy." Meredith nodded "So you can say, I push you down."  
"No, you won't be. I know we'll be happy wherever we go, whatever you decide and now go and kick some general surgery ass." He teased her "It'll be a hell of a day. It's their first day back, isn't it?"  
Meredith nodded "First day back after the wedding. We can be glad if there are no dead bodies, but Mark has been talking to Jackson, which is good -and April hasn't seen Lexie and Lexie hasn't seen Mark which is good because neither one has killed the other yet." Meredith smiled and Derek kissed her. "I better get going, your sister paged me."

* * *

It was Jackson's first day back in the hospital after the humiliation that had been his wedding. April was the first person he bumped into. She had tried to call him about a hundred times since the wedding, but he had ignored her calls. When their bodies bumped into each other, they looked at each other and neither one said a word. April looked into his face and smiled. She was glad that he was back, but Jackson shrugged while being totally captivated by April's eyes "Let's pretend we never met. Let's pretend we never knew what we know before we knew."  
"How your lips would feel" April starred at Jackson.  
"What your words can do. You never loved me, you never got up on my wedding day and ruined my wedding. I'll just pretend it never happened. I'll leave Seattle after my boards and pretend none of this happened." Jackson said and pushed April out of the room.  
"Jackson. Please." She begged.  
"No, April, I looked like a fool and that's on you…" Jackson yelled in the hall, which caught Bailey's attention.  
"You two should get off each other's throats, you have a patient" Bailey reminded them.

* * *

Alex had struggled with his inner demons ever since George had told him the diagnosis. As much as he didn't want to admit it, his father was a part of him "Can you examine me?" he walked up to Yang and took of his shirt.  
"You talked to your dad?" Cristina wondered and suddenly noticed his naked body "slow down, evil Spawn"  
"No, George talked to me. You and Altman are going to fix it, you can, can you?" Alex asked.  
"No, sorry Alex, he doesn't have insurance and he isn't an emergency." Cristina sighed. "Amber tried to talk me into it.  
"You are saying that he has to die before you help him?" Alex wondered "Can't Altman do it pro bono? I mean my African kids project brought tons of publicity to the hospital."  
"Do you actually want to save your dad's life or do you want to get rid of him?" Cristina wondered.  
"I want him to leave, but I want him to live and maybe one day he's going to change and he'll come back not being an ass." Alex spat out.  
"I'll see what I can do." Cristina nodded "and get dressed and make an appointment"

* * *

Lexie looked at the chart Meredith had handed over to her when she had arrived. It was her first day back at work after the disaster that had been her wedding day had happened. Everyone was looking at her -at least that what she felt like. The post-it read 'Gary Henderson, DOB 05-23-1936, gallstone removal scheduled for 11.20 am this afternoon. Have fun!'  
When she reached the room, she walked into Jackson in the hall. To avoid him, she went into the patient's room and closed the door behind her. She sighed and looked up to the ceiling.  
"Are you okay?" an old lady asked her.  
"I'm supposed to ask you" Lexie smiled and walked to the table "You must be the wife."  
"The girlfriend" Mr. Henderson looked at the woman next to him with an expression that disclosed all the love he felt for her. "We dated in my 30s, but fucked it up as you young folks would say. I simply wasn't able to appreciate her."  
"It was me." The woman insisted "I'm a lot younger than he is and I wasn't ready. I never forgot him. I dated other men, I got married but something always felt wrong"  
"I met her again during cruise 50 years after I proposed to her -to the day. She stood at the bar and I knew it was her" he said and smiled. "I found true love at 31, but had to wait 50 years to be with her. Darling, can you get me some magazines?" His girlfriend got up and left the room.  
"Alright, how do you like this?" he asked and pulled out a beautiful ring "I kept it all those years. I bought a different one when I met my late wife, but this one was always meant to be for her. I'm going to propose after surgery. If I don't make it, I want you to give her this"  
Lexie looked at a hundred-page script in front of her "What's this?" she wondered and looked through the pages. 'She's the kind of girl you meet when you are too young, when there is too much living to do. When I realized she's perfect, it was almost too late, I had fucked up and she had married Ronald. I thought I wasn't ready for the house and the kids and all of it, but I was wrong. We would have had a beautiful life and I'm going to be forever grateful that I found her again.' "It's your love story" Lexie swallowed.  
"and I'd like to add a proposal on the last page, so you better don't kill me in that OR." He laughed.

* * *

Mark was preparing for surgery when he noticed that Jackson was walking down the hall. "Avery, please wait, I know I'm the last person you want to talk to right now" he admitted.  
"Second to last or third to last, but pretty close" Jackson nodded.  
"but hear me out." Mark insisted "Right now you are desperate"  
"Oh thanks…" Jackson rolled his eyes.  
"don't interrupt me… you show promise and I'd love to keep teaching you." Mark insisted "You have a hang for plastics"  
"I don't think that's a good idea." Jackson insisted "I should just leave"  
"Think about it. We'd be a great team." Mark smiled.  
"What's up with you two?" Amelia wondered when she approached Mark when Jackson had left.  
"Why are you so happy?" Mark wondered "It's weird"  
"I just found out that sometimes it's absolutely right to jump ahead and skip a few steps" Amelia told him "I'm all about the bold moves these days"

* * *

Meanwhile Meredith had been paged to OR4. She was looking at Cristina who was standing at the lead surgeon position at the OR table. "Are you crazy?" Meredith looked at her "What are you doing? Don't tell me you are trying to win the price for most stupid decision of the month- because my sister is still on the top spot there"  
"It's Alex's dad." Cristina said "It's just a small repair. Something I've done hundreds of times."  
"Not without an attending out there." Meredith insisted.  
"You know, when I asked you whether you'd drive the getaway car, you can prove it now" Cristina insisted. "I need twenty minutes"  
"Fine, I'll stand guard" Meredith rolled her eyes. "I wasn't planning on doing secret Service work, but I'll do it"

* * *

"Where's James?" Owen looked at Sanders while they were examining a patient in trauma 1. The emergency room was a mess even though it wasn't a busy day, but it was obvious that something was wrong. April came into the room and asked the chief "There are four traumas in bay A to D that need immediate attention. What am I supposed to do?"  
"Ask James!" Owen said "I'm the surgeon. He's the ER doc."  
"He quit, he left, he's working in L.A. now and I think that's what I'm going to do too -after the boards." April admitted "I get the impulse."  
Owen looked at him in disbelief "Is this because of Amelia?" he wondered.  
"Or maybe he hated the rain." April mumbled "I hate the rain. I never noticed the rain, but…"  
"You should look for your patients, Dr. Kepner" Dr. Sanders reminded him. "It's not raining in here."  
"Yeah" April nodded. "Can I page someone?"  
"I'll come with you, Dr. Grey is going to help you with this, Dr. Hunt."

* * *

When Meredith looked at her pager, her heart jumped "OR4- Hunt- trauma". Cristina was in OR4 and wouldn't be finished for another ten minutes and there was no way to warn her. "Owen, what are you doing here?" she asked while she looked at the patient. She was stable.  
"I want to fix the tear" he said "and I thought you wanted to join me"  
"How are you and Cristina?" Meredith tried to buy a little time, but Owen knew that she was hiding something.  
"What's the matter, Meredith?" he wondered. "I'll go in there now"  
"Cristina is in there with a patient" Meredith blurred out.  
"The OR isn't booked."  
"It's not authorized." Meredith explained "She's doing this for Alex's dad. She's overstepping here, I know she is and… it's not… she's doing this to fix Alex"  
"I'll go in there, have an eye on our patient" Owen said and left Meredith in the hallway.

* * *

Lexie sat in the morgue and looked at Mr. Henderson. He had died on table and she was looking at the ring he had given to her and the script. Jackson walked in and apologized "Sorry, I can go if you want"  
Lexie shook her head "No, stay here." She insisted and they both tended to their patients. After fifteen minutes Lexie walked up to him "Jackson, I'm sorry, I was selfish. I wanted to tell you that you'd be better off without me, but I was selfish and I didn't say a word, because I knew I wouldn't have been better off without a miracle like you or Mark or…"  
"It's okay… Did he finish the story?" Jackson wondered and pointed to the script.  
"No, it's unfinished. Their life is unfinished. They never told their kids about their huge amazing love and… maybe… Maybe that's all they'll ever be…" Lexie sighed "an incomplete sentence, a half-written Story, finished, but without an ending."  
Neither one said a word. After all that was all they would ever be. A half-written story – a story without an ending – or a crappy one. "You think we should sent the manuscript to his Publisher?" Jackson wondered.  
"I don't know." Lexie said "and I have to give this to his girlfriend" Lexie pulled out the ring.  
"It's beautiful" Jackson said.  
"He bought a beautiful ring back then. He proposed to her 50 years ago" Lexie said "and she wasn't ready. Why are you not with April?"  
"Why are you not with Mark?" Jackson sighed "I mean right now we could have been happy and now everyone is miserable and…right now, I'm so angry. This was not how things were supposed to be."  
"I know." Lexie nodded "I'll talk to his girlfriend now"

* * *

"This is something Meghan would have done" Owen smirked when he walked into the OR.  
"Your sister Meghan?" Cristina looked up "What are you going to do now, bust me?"  
"I should report you." Owen nodded "But as of right now, I should help you, you have a patient who's breast is cracked open on your table and right now, Meghan would tease me about how I've never been the rebellious kind"  
"Is that why you like her so much?" Cristina wondered. They both knew that she was referring to Amelia and for a minute Owen thought it was true. Amelia had been the rebellious kind for a long time. She had no filter and she was one for the bold moves. "She gets me" he said and looked down at Alex's dad.  
"Crap, this wasn't supposed to happen" Cristina screamed and threw a few lab pads and sponges in. "Why is he bleeding? His vessels shouldn't be so fragile!"  
"Maybe you've overlooked something." Owen said "What was the diagnosis?"  
"congestive hepatopathy" Cristina said "He shouldn't be bleeding like this"  
"The hepatic vein is okay, isn't it?" Owen looked at her. She checked and noticed that it looked fine.  
"Yeah. I'm not a butcher" Cristina mumbled "There's a lesion"  
"Alright, he's stabilizing" Owen nodded relieved. "Get him into post op and get Meredith in here with the next patient"

* * *

One Week later

"Dejavu" Meredith sighed when she walked into Dr. Sander's office for the seventh time in seven days. She sat down next to Cristina who was reading medical journals while being watched by Sanders.  
"Is there something you'd like to share with me?" he wondered and looked at both of them.  
"No." Meredith said and started to read a journal.  
"So, what are we doing here?" Cristina wondered "Are you going to keep us here until our boards?"  
"One of you if going to tell me what happened or both of you are going to stay here until you do." Sanders insisted "Performing a surgery without an attending and without medical indication or a written permission from the patient leaves the hospital a huge liability."  
Owen had been there. "We've been doing this for a week now." Meredith mumbled. Amelia had asked her why she was unavailable and Derek was starting to get suspicious as well.  
"I can be very persistent." Dr. Sanders insisted "You'll stay with me until one of you spills the beans"  
"Owen was in there with her" Meredith insisted.  
"We've been over this" Sanders dismissed this. "I'll be off to surgery now, you stay in here."

* * *

The light in the ICU was dimmed. "How is he?" Alex wondered when he walked into the room where his sister had spent the past six days. She had gotten used to the sounds of the machines by now. Every six hours one of the nurses would come in and administer different meds into the IV or change it. "His vitals are stable, nothing changed." She said and looked up from her notes.  
"You should go home, you've been here all day and all night" Alex insisted.  
"and the nurses wouldn't have kicked me out if I hadn't organized and performed the yearly inventory for all their supply closets." Amber nodded "But he's still the same and we both know that the longer he stays like this, the less like it's he'll wake up. They took him off sedation twelve hours ago."  
"How do you know?" Alex wondered  
"There are studies on that." Amber teased him "You should know them. You have boards coming up"  
"And you read them." Alex looked at her in surprise.  
"I can read… " she smiled.  
"So, you stole all of my medical books" he smirked.  
"Because I needed them… I'm trying to decide on a career, Amelia suggested I'd be good at emergency medicine." Amber nodded "I'm surprised you are here." She had been the only visitor for a while. Alex had made sure that she wouldn't notice that he had been checking up on his dad as well.  
"He's my dad too. He might have screwed up, but he's my dad. We had a few good moments, a handful maybe…" Alex paused and looked at her "and if he was sober and at home, he really wasn't so bad."  
"Are your friends in a lot of trouble?" Amber wondered.  
"I guess." Alex nodded. "I shouldn't have asked."  
"They are good friends."  
"They are family." Alex hugged her.

* * *

Lexie sat on a bench and looked at her engagement ring. She still had not returned it. "What's the matter, Lex?" Mark wondered. "Are you okay?"  
"I can't stop thinking about one of my patients. He died during surgery and his girlfriend… they had been apart for 50 years… she told me… she didn't care if she didn't see him much because he has always lived in her heart and she knew that she was going to meet him again one day." Lexie started to cry "He's always going to live in my heart. I don't want that. I don't want to be apart from my soul mate until I'm in my 70s. I want to have that now. I want kids and I want a house and I want… I want you… it's like I'm infected with Mark Sloan and ..." Mark hugged her.  
"You send me away after the wedding." He said and hugged her.  
"I needed to clear my head." She nodded as he lifted her up "Hey, what are you doing?"

He started to hum a tune and started to spin while she was on his arms "You know now just quite how your life and love might still go on. In your heart, in your mind, I'll stay with you, for a long time. If I could than I would…" he sang.  
"Why are we dancing?" she smiled.  
"Because I want to dance with you every night when we are home, I want to dance with you on every wedding we go to and…"  
She interrupted him "I love you Mark"  
"if you want that too, we can go down to the courthouse right now." He smiled "I don't want to wait another day" He kissed her and used his fingers to dry her tears.  
"Are you insane?" she laughed and bit her lip.  
"No, I'm saying that you could have a husband. If you want one, we could go to the courthouse today!" he encouraged her.  
"We need witnesses and… I need a dress… and…" Lexie started to rumble, but Mark interrupted her with a kiss "It's going to be fine" he insisted.

* * *

George, Jackson and April stood in front of Sander's office and looked at Meredith and Cristina through the window. "What's happening in there?" Callie wondered when she walked across the bridge with Sofia.

"The Chief caught Cristina and Mer in the OR performing surgery on Alex'dad." April explained.

"What's so special about that?"

"He told Yang to discharge him because he doesn't have insurance and now he wants one of them to spill. You haven't heard about it?" George looked at Callie "They've been in there every day since it happened"

"Classic prisoner dilemma." Callie nodded "How long have they been in there? When did this happen?"

"All week. At least the nurses found something else to bitch about." April rolled her eyes "Hm, what's that prisoner dilemma?"

"Game Theory. Both parties have an incentive to spill the beans even though they gain the biggest shared benefit from remaining quiet. 50 says the Chief gives up before they do." Callie smirked.

"What makes you so sure of that?" Jackson wondered.

"Meredith and Cristina." Callie smiled.

"I'm in, he gives up at 12am." George handed over the money.

"4 pm." Callie nodded.

"I'm not going to bet on this while Alex's dad is still in a coma. He should have woken up by now." Jackson told them and walked away.

* * *

Mark, Derek, Callie, Bailey and Arizona were sitting in a conference room. Most surgeries didn't require a team of experienced surgeons to look through the files, Dr. Sanders had decided that this one did. Seattle Grace had received the case notes from Mass. Gen. as a courtesy. Now five surgeons were looking at a case of conjoined twins in Boise that was very similar to a case Arizona had treated earlier.  
"The two surgical teams are going through every step. I advise you all to eat, hydrate, and rest in between your procedures, as the entire surgery will take at least 18 hours." Arizona gave out handouts where she had summarized what she had been written down.

"I actually have to leave early" Mark interrupted her. "I have some business to take care of."  
"The surgery?" Callie wondered.  
"No, today"  
"Are you okay?" Derek wondered.  
"Never been better, I just have something to take care of" Mark smiled. This repetition threw Derek off. He knew when Mark was trying to hide something, but Mark left before he had a chance to find out more.

"Can anyone tell me what's going on with him?" Bailey looked at Callie, Arizona and Derek.  
"No idea." Callie sighed.  
"Me neither." Derek admitted.  
"We still have to discuss which residents are going to accompany us." Bailey said.  
"and who of us is going." Callie added "There's no necessity for a ortho surgeon in this case an experienced neuro surgeon will suffice."  
"Yeah, that's right." Arizona nodded.  
"I'll do a walkthrough with Amelia in case I'm leaving" Derek added.  
"When are you going to decide anyway?" Arizona wondered.  
"It's up to Mer." Derek admitted.  
"I'll go if Karev decides to leave. I'm confident he can do it. I trained him and I'd hate to lose him." Arizona smiled.  
"Alright, Mark will be going." Arizona looked at the potential candidates.  
"Lexie should be there to. What about general surgery expertise?" Derek wondered.  
"We all know you'd want your wife to be there, but I'm voting for April and George." Bailey smiled at him "They are staying here …"  
"George hasn't decided…" Callie corrected her.  
"But they are abiding by the rules." Bailey said and left the room.

* * *

Derek looked at the group of residents in front of Sander's office "What's Meredith doing in there?" he asked them

"Getting fired – again." Jackson rolled his eyes.

"I have to go in there." Alex insisted.

"No, Alex, you have to get away from that room as far as possible" Arizona insisted "I don't want to lose my only decent peds fellow"  
"He's not so bad actually." Jackson said

"My dad is the reason they're in there. I asked Cristina to help me to get rid of him, so she decided to fix his heart defect." Alex said "I just wanted him to leave"

"Anyway, that guy is on a cost cutting war path don't give him any excuses." Callie smiled "Boise is bringing in lots of publicity. Good publicity. He ranted about raising our public profile. But I agree with Arizona, Alex, you already told him that he was an idiot yesterday, don't make this worse."

* * *

Amelia approached Lexie and Mark in the parking lot "Mark? Lexie? What am I supposed to do here? Why did you page me on my day off?"  
"We are getting married and we needed a witness." Mark smiled "Get in the car" Amelia froze.  
"Get in here." Lexie smiled. Amelia looked at both of them. They seemed happy, something she had been for most of the time she had dated Owen.  
"Isn't this a little rash? Aren't you supposed to wait? What happens if you rush into it and notice that it's not what you pictured it to be and what about your dad and Meredith and what about Derek?" Amelia rambled "I can't be the only one -and I shouldn't be the voice of reason here."  
"We won't tell them. At least for a while." Lexie said.  
"Why? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to keep something like a secret and do you want to keep it a secret?" Amelia wondered.  
"Because… you remember what happened the last time, do you?" Lexie looked at her sternly.  
"People are supposed to have second thoughts, but this… you are getting married on a wimp…don't you want to do it properly?" Amelia asked again.  
"That's what I tried to do last time…" Lexie said, but Mark interrupted her "We are… and we thought you were the one person that wouldn't ask those questions."

* * *

Sanders sat in his office with Meredith and Cristina. "One of you is going to talk to me eventually." He said.

"Work time limit. 80 hours, I'm out of here in 15 minutes." Meredith said assertive.

"Go now and you won't have a job if you come back." Sanders insisted.

"My lawyer will get in touch with you." Meredith smiled "Matt, I've known you for a while. If you were serious, you would have notified the board immediately."

"I'm going too." Cristina seized the opportunity of the moment.

"I never witnessed this kind of disrespect from anyone. Your mother would be rolling in her grave if she knew." He told Meredith.

"Good thing she was cremated then. My mom did pro bono surgeries and she did a lot of them. She would have done this for a friend." Meredith insisted "She would have wanted Alex'dad to be fine. She would have agreed to do this surgery. You don't know her."

"This is a hospital, not a charity." He yelled back at her

"Our patients come first. They come here to get better and we are here to make the patients better, not to make a profit. You are going to be sorry you let us go." Cristina said and they both left the office.

* * *

"The judge is going to be here to marry you in a few minutes. Have a seat. Oh, Ms. Hunt, was something wrong with your copy of the marriage certificate again?" the secretary looked at Amelia. She swallowed and prayed to God that Mark and Lexie had missed this.  
They had not "Hunt? You got married. You are married to Owen. Unless he has a hot brother, we don't know anything about." Mark teased her "When did this happen?"  
"The day your fiancée was supposed to get married." Amelia mumbled.  
"I figure this is supposed to be a secret too." Lexie stated.  
"I'd appreciate it." Amelia nodded.

* * *

One week later

"Romance is dead… I mean look at the mess with you and Cristina." April reminded him, unaware of his recent nuptials.  
"Sometimes it turns out that messy is good. Commitment isn't something you should be running from. It turns out commitment helps." Owen smiled under his mask.  
"You broke up with Cristina after you cheated on her. How does that help?" April paused "I'm sorry Dr. Hunt."  
"Why don't you go out on dates, Kepner?" Owen encouraged her.  
"Why? Why would you do that? Nothing turns out the way it's supposed to be, people get married and others get hurt in the process and it messes everything up and… dates are for people who don't know who they want to be with… why is he not in love with me?" April tried to withhold her tears.  
"What happened?" Owen wondered.  
"I did the right thing, but I lost my best friend and my soul mate and I miss him and I'm supposed to be studying for my boards, but I just can't concentrate." She was an emotional wreck ever since the wedding "He's on my mind all the time, I mean it's the middle of the night and I see his face in the guy on our table."  
"That's not a bad thing. Suction please, I can't see the vein." Owen shrugged, but noticed he had been too harsh "Kepner, what I learned is that no matter how messed up things get, if it's meant to happen it will… it sounds like a cliché, but it's true. Eventually you'll get over the pain you felt today -and you'll feel good and… Amelia and I got married." April's eyes widened and she dropped the retractor.

* * *

Jackson sat down next to Derek in the gallery "My mom used to take me to the gallery. Meredith taught me reading there. She was always in the gallery. She knew most of the steps in her mother's surgeries better than the first and second year residents, but her mother never noticed her. I was good at sports and I was the pretty one. I didn't tell anyone I had taken the MCAT before I had received the acceptance letter."  
"So, you don't want to go back to Boston?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, Seattle is as far from it was it gets…" Jackson laughed "I'd love to stay here, but I'd also like to get away."  
"Nobody's blaming you after everything that happened." Derek nodded. "It's messy"  
"There's nobody I can talk to. I can't talk to April or Mark. I miss working with Dr. Sloan!" Jackson admitted.  
"I miss working with Meredith. I always pictured us working together. She would have been an excellent neuro surgeon." He sighed.  
"I wish somebody would say this about me!" Jackson laughed "I was always the pretty one"  
"Mark is full of praise for your skills!"  
"He told me I'm desperate." Jackson rolled his eyes.  
"It's his way of saying it" Derek got up. "I have something to take care of"

* * *

Extra ordinary measures. Derek had always hated to think about them. Sometimes they were necessary, sometimes people had to decide if they wanted to continue waiting for a miracle. Amber had signed the papers this morning after she and Alex had a look at the charts. "It might take a while." Derek looked at Alex and Amber.  
"We don't need the explanations." Alex said "Just start"  
"You do. Your sister does. I'll turn down the alarm and I'll remove all tubes. It might take a while, but eventually he's going to stop breathing and his heart will stop beating. I'll start once you are ready" Derek explained and turned off the alarm.  
"It's fine." Amber nodded. Derek removed the tubes. Usually this was a task that a nurse would take care of, but Alex was family to Meredith, so Derek had decided to take over. He left the chart and put a DNR sign.

Twenty minutes later they vitals were still good, both of them knew that it might take hours "You don't have to stay." Amber said "I know you hated him"  
"I didn't hate him and I love you" Alex said and took his hand "I want to stay."

* * *

Meredith and George said in the entrance hall of Mass Gen. "Wow, look how far we've come. You are the reason I'm still in the race." George took her hand.  
"You are the reason you are still in that race" Meredith smiled.  
They were interrupted by a surgeon who ran to Meredith and hugged her "Mer, I just came out of surgery, I'm sorry." Maggie hugged her and looked at George "Who are you?"  
"George. O'Malley." George extended his hand.  
"Nice to meet you, George O'Malley." Maggie shook his hand "So you two interviewed here."  
"Yeah. And it was a disaster." George laughed.  
"A complete disaster." Meredith laughed.  
"But I got the job." George smiled.  
"You did?" Meredith wondered.  
"You'll work with me." Maggie smiled.  
"If I accept the offer" George nodded. He wasn't sure whether moving to Boston would be a good choice though.  
"Derek would get his will if I accept the offer – if I get one. I'm tempted to say no to spite him." Meredith mumbled.  
"Isn't that a bit childish? Working at Mass Gen is great!" Maggie looked at her half-sister "You liked working at "  
"I guess it is. It's what mom did, it's what I did, we were pregnant and we left Seattle. I'd still be here if it wasn't for Dr. Springer's trial." Meredith nodded.  
"You'd love that story." George laughed.  
"Well, I know all about it." Maggie nodded. "Hold on, you are the baby daddy. Mer talked about you once."  
"Yeah, I'm Sofia's dad" he smiled. "Do you want to see a picture now? It's a lot nicer without all the tubes. She likes to play ball in the garden"

* * *

When Lexie arrived at the attendings lounge the door was locked. She knocked and Amelia opened the door for a second, only to pull her inside and lock it again. "I'm pregnant" Amelia said "My breasts are swollen and I throw up like six times a day and I feel sick all the time."  
"You might have the flu, Zola has it." Lexie tried to calm her down.  
"It's not the flu. I'd know if it was the flu, I'm a doctor." Amelia yelled at her.  
"Why don't you pee on a stick?" Lexie wondered "Or go to an OB/GYN"  
"Shouldn't Owen be there with me?" Amelia rambled.  
"While you pee on a stick?" Lexie looked at her in confusion.  
"No, while I wait or should I wait until I'm sure and tell him then?" she walked up and down the room "Or should I do a test now and tell him that I…"  
"Calm down." Lexie insisted.  
"I've never thrown up in an OR before." Amelia smiled.  
"Amelia, you should go home and rest. If this is the flu, you wouldn't want to take chances." Lexie whispered "and if you are, it's the perfect time to make an appointment"  
"I didn't have to do it, the last time" Amelia said.  
"The last time?" Lexie looked at Amelia "What do you mean?"  
"The father was dead the last time."

* * *

"Meredith had waited in a conference room for her interview for twenty minutes when the door opened and two senior surgeons walked in. Her heart stopped. Catherine Avery was going to make a decision about whether she'd get the job and they hadn't talked since Catherine had checked the bridesmaid bouquets on the day her son had been supposed to get married.  
"How's your sister Dr. Grey?" Catherine wondered after she had sat down.  
"Fine." Meredith smiled and took a sip of water.  
"Dr. Grey's sister and my son left each other at the altar. They chickened out the last minute and ran out." Catherine told the other interviewer, someone Meredith knew from her short time at  
"With each other?" the man wondered.  
"No, my sister ran off with the best man and Jackson decided to run off with the girl he had picked as best man before that." Meredith cut the conversation short before Catherine got a chance to air dirty laundry "How are you, Dr. Avery?"  
"Call me Catherine, after all, I almost became your sister's mother in law." Catherine smiled and Meredith wished she could disappear in the ground. What had her sister gotten her into?  
"Dr. Avery is fine. After all you didn't become my sister's mother in law." Meredith smiled.  
"How long do we know each other?" Catherine wondered.  
"A very long time. My mother worked here." Meredith smiled "and your father in law hired me not too long ago"  
"I think the first time I saw you was the afternoon that horrible kid pushed Jackson off a slide and he broke his arm." Catherine tried to remember.  
"That would have been me, too." Meredith looked up and couldn't believe how absurd the situation was.  
"Why don't we start?" the other surgeon came to the rescue.  
"That'd be great." Meredith nodded "I studied at Dartmouth and completed my residency at Seattle Grace Mercy West and . But was just research"  
"And a couple of heart surgeries and a lot of neuro surgeries as far as my father in law was concerned. We have a transcript." Catherine cut her off "So Boston is your first option?"  
"It is." Meredith nodded.  
"Well, seeing you already worked with some of the attendings on staff, I'm very optimistic we can make you a decent offer. HR is going to get in touch with you." Catherine nodded "We'd love to have you on the team"

* * *

"Avery, wait up." Mark insisted. He hadn't heard back from Jackson.  
"Oh, right, Dr. Sloan. - You need to talk to me" Jackson nodded.  
"No, - I am sorry about today I'm sorry. - It was my –"  
"No, you don't have anything to be sorry about."  
"- No, I think I should apologize to you for – "  
"No, it wasn't you. It was me."  
"I have been…"  
"I just think we had some "  
"I don't want to screw things up."  
"Okay, I'm gonna talk, then you talk, okay?" Mark insisted after both of them had been incoherently interrupted each other.  
"Okay." Jackson nodded.  
"I want to be your teacher." He said.  
"I want to be your student." Jackson noted.  
"I have a cranial vault reconstruction tomorrow." Mark said.  
"I will be there." Jackson nodded.  
"Good. Great. I guess the plastics posse is back in action. Kicking surgical ass and taking names."  
"Congratulations by the way. Lexie told me when she returned the ring. So, good luck!" Jackson said quietly.

* * *

Meredith was standing on top of her hotel bed. She was free and for a second she felt like she knew what she wanted. Despite the awkward encounter with Jackson's mother, it had been a good day. Maggie and she had taken George on a little tour through Boston and it had felt like it was meant to be. She stood on top of her bed and started to jump. She felt free, liberated because now, everything was easy. Her phone rang and she dropped her body to the bed and rolled over. "I think they just offered me a position at the Brigham." She giggled.  
"Because you are amazing." The voice on the other side said "So, it's between Boston, New York and Seattle?"  
"I don't know, the kids are happy." Meredith said  
"Yeah, they don't have a clue what's going to happen." Derek nodded.  
"What do you think?" Meredith wondered. He had put off Boston for so long.  
"I'm thinking New York is closer to home and the offer at Harvard is amazing, but it's really up to you." He said  
"I'll miss Seattle, but…" she paused "I like Boston."  
"You think we should leave?" Derek asked in disbelief.  
"Everyone is leaving." Meredith said "You sound surprised."  
"Well, you always said Seattle was the only place that felt like home to you." Derek sighed, but smiled as he looked at Christopher and Zola playing in the living room.  
"And it'll be like Hiraeth in a few weeks." Meredith shrugged.  
"What's Hiraeth?" Derek wondered.  
"Something I picked up in Wales. It's a homesickness to a home you cannot return to." She smiled "When they leave, it'll be different and Derek you are my home -you and the kids. We can build a house anywhere, but a home, it's more fragile than this, but you are my home."  
"Zola told me to say hello." Derek smiled.  
"She was supposed to be in bed hours ago." Meredith said.  
"It's only six in Seattle." Derek laughed. "Right now, I'm preparing dinner."  
"Oh, I forgot. Tell her I love her." Meredith smiled "I'll call you when I'm at the airport tomorrow. How's Seattle?"  
"Oh, it's quiet" Derek sighed "Nothing ever happens without you"

* * *

Alex and Amber sat on the front porch when Cristina walked up to the front door. "I heard, Alex. I'm sorry" Cristina said.  
"Thanks, Yang! I guess it's okay. You did everything you could." Alex nodded "Sit down"  
"I could have done better." Alex nodded "Sit down and shut up!"  
"And you will probably, you'll learn from this – and maybe somebody else's dad won't die." Amber said "Sit down now"  
"What are you doing?" Cristina wondered  
"We are looking at the stars?" Amber said "Alex used to take me to the hill whenever something dangerous was going on at home. He'd grab our sleeping bags and he'd drive us to the top of the hill on his bicycle. We'd snuggle up next to each other and look at the stars."  
"That's nice" Cristina smiled.  
"What are you doing these days?" Alex wondered.  
"Sitting in my apartment, eating microwavable dinners for one and studying for my boards. It's a lot of fun. My life sucks as much as yours, evil spawn."  
"Just look at the stars" Alex smiled "Just look at the stars, Yang"

* * *

Next day

Lexie stood at the nurse station and was checking the charts her interns had completed, when someone approached her from behind and squeezed her bottom "How's my beautiful wife?" he whispered into her ear.  
"Mark, don't do this in public!" she turned around and pushed him away.  
"Alexandra Grey-Sloan, I want to tell it to everybody! I met the girl of my dreams! I'm in love with her and we got married! I'm not the bad guy here. You are the bad guy." Mark tried to sway her.  
"I'm a resident -and we'll keep quiet about this until they decide about senior resident." Lexie insisted.  
"How are you two lovebirds?" Meredith laughed when she saw them. She had her suspicions that the two of them were in the sheets together and the look on Mark's face confirmed it.  
"You told her?" Mark looked at Lexie in surprise.  
"I didn't." Lexie whispered  
"You haven't told her we did…" Mark nodded.  
"Did what? What happened while I was in Boston? Lexie look at me." Meredith insisted. "I just took a six-hour flight, talk to me"  
"We'll tell you at home. We'll come over for dinner on Friday." Lexie smiled and glanced at Mark before she walked away.  
"Are you not going to tell me what's going on?" Meredith looked at Mark "You know, you look like I did, way back when you knew I was married and I knew I was married and nobody else did, oh my God, you and Lex got married."  
"Yeah, but keep quiet." Mark nodded "and don't tell Derek"

* * *

"Is this place taken?" Jackson looked at April who was sitting at a table at Joe's all by herself. She was looking at a glass of ice tea.  
She looked up and smiled, before she looked down again "No, go ahead. I'm on call, so I might be gone any second"  
Jackson nodded "I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I'll stay in Seattle after the boards. I just wanted to let you know – in case." He said and neither one said a word.  
"Okay. That's good I guess." April nodded after a moment of silence. Jackson smiled at his beer.

* * *

 _Once the chaos subsides we have to go back and take another look, we have to ask ourselves: Can this body be put back together? If we've done our jobs right, it can. We stop the bleeding. We sew up the damage. We make the body whole again. But no matter how hard we try, we have to realize some things just can't be fixed._

* * *

It had been a long surgery. Trauma patient with multiple spinal injuries. "What's that? What's going on here?" Meredith looked at Amelia's hands and noticed that she tried to hide that she was pulling something out of her scrub pocket "Oh my God, that's a wedding ring! Is that why you've been smiling and being cheerful all the time? What's the matter with all of you?"  
"It is and… Marriage is like a bed and breakfast in Vermont, with sex." She smiled. "It's uplifting"  
"Until you have kids -or a husband who thinks he's God." Meredith sighed and looked at her. They both knew what she was talking about. "You didn't want me to talk about S.E.X and Derek -…"  
"And when I want the sex, I don't have to get out of bed and drive to the sex. I just roll right over." Amelia kept going and ignored everyone around her.  
"Can you stop it?" April who had joined them in the scrub room begged.  
"Why would I want to stop it? Married sex is dirtier than I expected." Amelia said and looked at Meredith.  
"Not the sex, the bragging. You're flashing your money after going to the ATM. We get it. You're sex-rich." April told her "Married and sex-rich."  
"Haven't you pledged to wait?" Meredith looked at April "But you're right, it is not polite to brag in front of people who are sex-poor." She moved her eyes toward April.  
"Some of us are barely making ends meet." April sighed.  
"You got married? You got married to Owen? Good for you!" Cristina starred at them and turned around. Her surgery had been pushed for theirs.

"This is bad." April whispered and looked at Meredith. She dried her hands and followed Cristina. She ran down the hall.

"Cristina! Wait! Just wait" Meredith yelled while she followed Cristina through the hospital.  
By the time they had reached the parking lot Cristina stopped and pulled out her phone. "This is Cristina Yang. I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to accept the offer. "  
"You are leaving. What about me?" Meredith wondered.  
"You'll just have to figure it out on your own. I can't stay here to make you feel better. I'm not your person, he is."

* * *

 _I'm very sorry that this has been so long (some of you have been a little concerned, but I can asure you that I'm fine, a little cold, but I'm fine). I didn't update in a while, but that's just life I guess...at first I was busy at work, then I didn't feel like writing and when I did, I didn't like the end, so I had to rewrite a few bits that turned into huge parts of the last two chapters...and then there was something on netflix I wanted to watch and ... it took a while to find an ending that would work for all the characters (and stay true to their stories)... this is the end... almost... one final chapter and the journey is going to be over. Thank you for all your kind words and lovely reviews, for your subscriptions and favs. XOXO_ _Anna_


	61. Chapter 61

_Patsy: Those 61 chapter have been 64 in my original draft. I merged a few into one whenever I felt like a cliffhanger didn't suit the situation or whenever I felt like the story line should be a little bit more compact._

 _This is it... the last chapter... I hope that all of you are going to be happy with where I end things. Have one! It's been a long run, but things are meant to end eventually!_

* * *

 **Chapter 61**

 _Everything eventually ends. Much as I've looked forward to this day, I've always disliked endings. Last day of summer, the final chapter of a great book, parting ways with a close friend. But endings are inevitable. Leaves fall, we close the books, residency is over. You say goodbye. Today is one of those days. Today we are saying goodbye to everything familiar, everything that was comfortable. We are moving on._

* * *

George, Callie and Arizona sat on the couch in the living room. Sofia had been sick for two days now and neither one had gotten any sleep. It was 3.00 am and Sofia was still running a fever and crying. Callie carried her through the apartment hoping that it would calm her down.  
"This is worse than internship" George mumbled "I have to be at work in four hours and I haven't slept in two days"  
"Don't complain. Neither have I" Arizona and he were leaning against each other on the couch "One of us should try to sleep"  
"I wonder how single parents do it" George mumbled "I mean Anna…"  
George stopped. Arizona smiled sympathetic. He hadn't mentioned the name in a while "What about Anna?"  
"She's in DC, I'm in Washington." George said "and when Sophie is sick, she has to do it on her own"  
"Well, you could go and see her" Arizona suggested "You sound like you still want to see her"  
"Stop, he's worried about Sof! He …" Callie interrupted her.  
"doesn't want to leave and be a crappy father." George nodded "Sit down, I'll take her for a while. Christ, she's burning. Are you sure we shouldn't bring her to the hospital"  
"No we shouldn't." Arizona insisted "You're an amazing dad and you love her. You were cute together. I liked her kid."  
"She's happy now. She told me during our last call." George sighed while he was carrying Sofia around the couch.  
"Then go and be happy with her. You are trying to be happy here, but you are not." Arizona insisted.  
"Don't mettle" Callie insisted.

* * *

Meredith walked into the chief's office. "What's up Meredith?" Dr. Sanders wondered "Are you going to shout obscenities at me again?"  
"The Brigham offered me a job. Derek thinks it's a general fellowship." Meredith admitted "I want to take it, but"  
"But you also chose neuro -and you still haven't told him." Sanders smiled. "You lost me a fair amount of money. Dr. Bailey bet me that you'd keep the secret until the very end."  
"The Brigham isn't the greatest address for a neuro fellowship, but Derek has this great offer from Harvard and will work at . and I don't want to work under him." Meredith decided to ignore his bet "I'll take the offer and I just wanted to let you know"  
"You should tell him. Mer, you specialised in neuro without the head of neurosurgery knowing about it. We kept this secret for too long. You should tell him. He's your husband and while he's my head of neurosurgery, your sister in law would get fired if the Chief hadn't been the one that suggested this. She'd get fired for signing off on all of your surgeries in neuro."  
"I don't even know if I'll pass my boards." Meredith sighed. "It's really stressful with two kids and… "  
"Don't be stupid." Matthew Sanders poured a glass of whiskey for both "Have one with me."  
Mer looked at her pager and ran.

* * *

"Oh, my God, what happened?" Meredith looked at the patient in front of her.  
"Building collapse. 16-year-old male. His parents are in the waiting room. If he hadn't ditched class, he would have been at school when it happened."  
"Guess, he learned his lesson." Amelia mumbled and looked at George "Where is your attending?"  
"Hunt? He's in another OR." George answered.  
"What do you want me to do?" Meredith looked at Amelia who was reviewing the images they had gotten before the patient had been brought to the OR.  
"Looking at the scans, this is a team effort. You'll do that one, and I'll do this one." Amelia smiled "Team Shepherd-Grey. We have to make sure we decompress his spine before it's too late. You'll make sure he's stable. "  
"If you turn him his organs are going to be all over the floor." George tried to stop them, but Meredith went through the usual triad catalogue. "Is he bleeding?"  
"Well, there's a gigantic hole in his abdomen." Owen pointed at what seemed like a huge tear.  
"But no gastrointestinal perforation or compromised blood vessels." Meredith nodded "We go in first. We'll flip him and you make sure his bowel stays in there."  
"I hate you and all your general surgery knowledge." George rolled his eyes. "If Hunt was here, he'd outvote you"  
"Callie helped me study for the boards and by the way, I'm brilliant." Meredith smiled.

Forty minutes into the surgery, Amelia moved her eyes and removed her instruments from the surgical area "Amelia, are you alright?" Meredith wondered.  
"No, I'm dizzy. Page my brother." Amelia insisted  
"You can't page him." Meredith insisted.  
"I can. This is an emergency surgery and we are racing the clock." Amelia sighed. "I'm sorry"

Five minutes later Meredith's worst nightmare became true. Derek walked into the OR while she was performing a neurosurgical procedure "You paged? What have we got?" Derek wondered.  
"A really nasty spinal injury." Meredith said.  
"Why are you here?" Derek wondered.  
"She jumped in to help your sister." George said "ORs are over-crowded and this takes a while."  
"I'm surprised they didn't find anyone with a little more expertise in neuro." Derek stated. For a second Meredith was hurt.  
"She has all the expertise she needs, I showed her what to do and she knows. So instead of questioning your wife, why don't you just step to the table?" Amelia shrugged.  
"Alright" Derek smirked "You are quite bossy."  
"I'm getting used to being the boss around here." Amelia smiled "I mean, you are leaving and… I'll be the only Shepherd around here"

* * *

Alex sat on the front porch and looked at the offers from Hopkins and Mt. Sinai. "Alex, you can go, take the job, I don't need a babysitter. I'll start my degree in fall and I'm going to therapy and NA. I have a new part-time job. I'm doing good. You don't have to worry about me. " Amber said "In case that's why you want to stay here."  
"All I do is worry." He sighed. "My boards are freaking me out"  
"You can stop worrying, Alex. I'll be fine. I took a wrong turn, but now I'm back on track. He died, it's okay." Amber sat down next to him "and you know all of this stuff"  
"I'd miss you Amber"  
"I won't, Alexander." Amber teased him.  
"Don't call me Alexander." He insisted.  
"Mom calls you Alexander , Alex-ander."  
"You've been a pain in the ass most of the time." Alex chuckled. "I was trying. Mom would be proud. You are graduated and you're in college"  
"and you'll be a kickass surgeon. I know I owe this to you, Alex. Thanks for taking me in." Amber said "I might not remember dad, but I remember the foster homes."  
"You are my sister. I had to." Alex hugged her.  
"We are a pretty dysfunctional family." Amber said.  
"But that doesn't mean that we don't look out for each other." He nodded "You grew up, Ams."  
"And I screwed up." She sighed "I don't even know why"  
"You are a teen, you are meant to screw up."  
"You took care of Aaron and me when you were a teen."  
"I had to." Alex nodded.  
"You'll be a wonderful doctor Alex. I'm proud to have a brother like you."  
"And you are a bright young girl. You'll find your way, Karevs always do."  
"It's not like I'll go to a lot of parties anyway, so I guess I'll have lots of time to hit books" Amber nodded "I talked to his parents. They understood."  
"Just promise me that you are going to take care of yourself…"  
"I love you Alex."  
"You are not so bad either. I'll have to get going. They are paging me to the hospital." He got up and left.

* * *

Meredith and Derek were scrubbing out after surgery. "You were good in there." He complimented her.  
"Thanks!" she smiled.  
"Why were you in there?" Derek asked. Meredith knew why he was confused. Usually Amelia should have been assisted by someone who wanted to specialise in neuro or needed the hours, but as far as Derek knew neither applied to her. "But I guess, I'll be the one that signs off on your last surgery before the boards, anyway"  
"We'll page Bailey for round 2. Are you up for it?" George wondered.  
"No, actually not, I have to get to the ER. There are a few people I need to have a look at." Meredith explained. "It's packed. They are well over capacity"  
"Bay 15, 8, 9 and 3?" Derek wondered.  
"How do you know?" Meredith looked up.  
"It seems that Amelia's pages are diverted to both of us which is weird." Derek smirked "Care to elaborate?".  
"Amelia paged me, you'd have to ask her. She was chalky in surgery and got dizzy which was when she asked someone to page you" Meredith rambled "and she told me to take over for her, I guess that's what I'm doing. Crap, it's 11.30. Someone has to pick up Mark and Maria at the airport"  
"I'll take 3 and 15 and you take 8 and 9, Derek told her"  
"Alright, it was a pleasure working with you, Dr. Shepherd" Meredith smiled.  
"See you around, Dr. Grey" Derek smiled.  
"See you around." Meredith nodded.

* * *

"Oh, I thought you had forgotten about us" Mark joked when Derek pulled up at the airport.  
"Building collapse, don't want to talk about it. You are lucky I got away with Amy feeling sick" Derek smiled "Christ, Hello Maria, you grew a lot"  
"Hey uncle Derek" the small girl smiled.  
"Well, hopefully my wife will stop yours from burning down the kitchen" Mark joked and hoped that Derek would pick up on this.  
"Meredith is still at the hospital" Derek said "Actually, she's the one that is covering for me… hold on, you got married?"  
"Lexie and I got married" Mark nodded. "I've been dying to tell you"  
"In that case, we should be cooking dinner. Why didn't you tell me?" Derek wondered.  
"After everything that happened, we just wanted to…" Mark couldn't really make up an excuse, so he decided for the decoy. "Did you know Amy got married?"  
"Amy is married? When did this happen? When did all of you get married?" Derek wondered "That's amazing. We should have a party."  
"Seems to be a thing." Mark nodded "Did you know how dirty married sex is?"  
"I've been married for longer than you know your wife." Derek smiled.  
"You always built it better second time around, I guess." Mark nodded "but man, if I had known…"

* * *

Meredith went to bay 8 after she had sent the patient in bay 9 to the CT. By now, the resident that had requested the consult must have been waiting for 20 minutes. She opened the curtain and looked at a woman who was chatting away with her sister. "What do we have?" she interrupted them "Hello, I'm Dr. Meredith Grey. I'm your neuro consult."  
"Oh, I wasn't expecting you" Lexie said.  
"Well, I'm your consult" Meredith told her and completed all of the usual checks and looked at the imaging from the CT scans "She's clear"  
"Are you sure?" Lexie wondered.  
"Feel free to call in someone else for a second opinion, but there are no signs of a concussion and the CT looks fine." They took a few steps away from the bed and closed the curtain.  
"Sorry, I was supposed to be out of here 12 hours ago and got pulled into a trauma procedure before the building collapse"  
"It's fine, I'll schedule a check-up in two hours, someone is going to check her. It's my day off by the way, I was supposed to be packing. " Meredith said "but I got to do surgery with Derek one last time, so I guess, it was worth it"  
"We were supposed to be cooking and… someone has to pick up Maria and Mark at the airport" Lexie freaked out.  
"Derek is going to take care of that" Meredith smiled "Relax! Talk to the patient and tell her everything is fine."

* * *

Mark and Derek had made each other comfortable in the living room and watched the kids play catch "Maria looks just like Addison" Derek noted.  
"and Christopher looks just like you" Mark nodded. "We could dress them up and re-enact your wedding photos. Oh, Addison would be mad about that"  
"They are growing up so quickly, So so quickly. It's like you blink and they are off to college and grown up. It's like they… one wrong move and they are gone, there's this version of them that never comes back." Derek nodded.  
"Hey, sorry we are late, but we bought Thai take out on our way out and with the building collapse, we are lucky we got away at all" Meredith greeted them when she and Lexie came into the door. "Hey Mark"  
"Auntie Mer" Maria ran toward Meredith and hugged her leg.  
"Hey sweetie." Meredith messed up Maria's red hair. "Don't you want to say Hello to Lexie too?"  
The girl held on to Meredith leg and peeked through her legs "Hey Lexie"  
"We could take off and go fishing when Meredith is in San Francisco." Derek suggested to Mark.  
"You know I don't like trout." Meredith giggled.  
"You don't have to eat it if you are in another town." Derek laughed.  
"I'd have to smell it because you never eat all of it and leave it in the fridge." Meredith biggered.  
"Smelly fishy." Zola mumbled. Lexie giggled and walked over to Mark.  
"Yucky fishy" Christopher giggled.  
"He's definitely yours." Mark looked at Meredith.  
"A little McDreamy." Lexie smiled.  
"I hope he becomes more like his godfather when he grows up." Mark stated and fist bumped with Christopher.  
"I don't need to have a little copy of you running around." Meredith looked at Mark and Lexie who had cuddled up on the couch next to each other "So, you'll be fine with Chris, Lexie?"  
"Yeah, I'll be fine" Lexie nodded. "Zo, can you come over for a second?"  
"What's the matter?" Meredith looked at both.  
"Zola has the flu, well, at least she has a fever and is sweating. George mentioned that Sofia has been sick the last couple of days. She's been vomiting all the way back from the hospital yesterday."

* * *

Nobody said a word. That was not how studying worked. George knew that, but he had studied with the Callie Torres Method, so he felt prepared anyway. "You two agreed to study with each other. Get your shit together, this is driving me insane!" George yelled. April and Jackson shifted their focus from the chart in front of them to George  
"I'm not the one that…" Jackson got defensive.  
"Don't you blame me." April shouted at him "You got down that aisle as much as I did. I didn't drag you or hold you at gun point."  
"Okay, it wasn't my fault either and just because I can't figure out what I want as quickly as you or Sloan or Lexie, doesn't mean I'm not trying!" Jackson looked at her and turned around to look at George "So, throw everything at me! I'm an Avery! I should be able to answer this."  
"Amy is married and Lexie is married and… I wanted to be married by now." April started to cry.  
"Well, you didn't go into plastics either or neurology or oncology." Jackson made a snide remark. Those had been the specialties April had mentioned on their first day of internship "It's what she wanted to do – set hours."  
"And look at my life now, it's a mess." April said and got up. "Look at you, Mr. Cardio surgeon, look how that turned out!"

Both Jackson and George remained quiet and on their seats. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Jackson wanted to know.  
"You should follow her" George insisted.  
"No, I really shouldn't. It's her thing." Jackson stated.  
"It's your thing."  
"I don't owe her anything." Jackson yelled.  
"You do." George told him and left.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Meredith wondered "I just got Zola to bed"  
"I have a surprise for you. I know you are busy but I promise it won't take more than 10 minutes." Derek whispered into Meredith's ear.  
"I have had enough surprises for today" Meredith said "I don't have 10 minutes, I need to study."  
"You knew most of the procedures by the age of 12. It's not…"  
"… brain surgery?" Meredith interrupted him.  
"Well, yeah, it isn't." He nodded and hugged him "It isn't. Just come with me".  
"Derek, I have to study. I don't want to fail." Meredith insisted "I've spent the past two hours trying to get our sick daughter to sleep"  
"You won't fail, Meredith." Derek kissed her forehead "Just trust me!"  
"Fine, so what do you want to show me?" Meredith looked at her husband.  
"I'm going to blindfold you and guide you."

Derek guided Meredith outside to the front porch. "Where are we going? What's going on?" Meredith wondered.  
Derek untied the knots of the blindfold "Why are all the candles here?" Meredith looked at Derek.  
"That's how it started for us in this place" Derek said "You build the house of candles and we moved here. No matter what happens in San Francisco, you can always come back to his place. It might be in Boston or New York, but this is our home and I'll always be in our home. I just wanted to show you the view"  
"Lexie got married" Meredith sat down on the front porch "I can't believe Mark and Lexie got married. It's like, I don't know. They've been circling around each other for years and… now… gravity finally caught up and… it's the universe. I'm going to miss this place."  
"It was meant to happen" Derek nodded. "I've never seen him like this -and you, you are glowing!"  
"It's the candle light" Meredith blushed.  
"No, it's your sparkle"

* * *

Cristina looked around herself and led the new group of interns into the OR that had been set aside for the introduction. For a moment, she was taken back in time. Dr. Webber had said those words before and yet, even though a new Chief had taken over, the spirit of the speech prevailed. "A month ago, you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today you are the doctors. The five years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. We are here to heal, not to harm. We are here to create, not destroy. You have no right to judge what he did. We are surgeons and he's our patient. When we are in that OR every life matters. Don't write that down Nr. 4"  
"Wilson, my name is Wilson" the intern insisted.  
"And I don't care what your name is, I'll be gone tomorrow." Cristina told her and continued her lecture "Let me continue. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play, that's up to you"  
Alex walked up behind her and took over. "Thanks, Yang. She's leaving tomorrow, which means you'll be stuck with me." He introduced himself "I'm Alex Karev. I'm a fellow in paediatric surgery."  
"You stay?" Cristina asked. She was a little surprised.  
"I do. Wilson come over here. " Alex ordered one of the interns. "Name the common causes of post-op fever."  
"Uh, yes."the brunette bit her lip and grabbed her notepad.  
"From your head, not from a book. Don't look it up. Learn it." Alex insisted "lt should be in your head. Name the common causes of post-op fever."  
"Uh the common causes of post " Jo Wilson stuttered.  
"Can anybody name the common causes of post-op fever?" Alex looked around.  
"Wind, water, wound, walking, wonder drugs." Heather said insecurely "The five W's. Most of the time, it's wind, splinting or pneumonia."  
"Alright, your residents are waiting for you" Alex said "Have fun"

* * *

Cristina walked out of the OR. This would probably be the last time she ever sat a foot into one at Seattle Grace Mercy West. It was time to move on, she thought to herself. "That was a good speech." Someone in her back said. When she turned around she saw Owen.  
"Thanks! " she nodded. "So, I guess this is good bye. I'm leaving after the exams. I'll start in Cleveland the Monday after the boards."  
"I guess it is." Owen nodded "Good luck with your boards. I know you don't need it, but good luck anyway. It was a privilege to know you. It really was."  
"You can always call me, Owen." Cristina reminded him.  
"I guess it's better if I don't do that." Owen sighed. "We both have a new life now"  
"Do you remember that night after the house fire?" she reminisced.  
"I do. ER was overcrowded, you and me, we kissed in the rain at the end of the night." He nodded "I knew you were special since that night. You didn't run for shelter. You are an extraordinary mind, a brilliant surgeon and you have your heart in the place. We could have had a hell of a good time."  
"If only I weren't me and you weren't you." Cristina nodded "I hope she makes you happy"  
"Yeah." He nodded "I hope you'll be happy there – without Meredith and everything"  
"So this is it." She looked at Owen. In another life they would have kissed, but they were over. "I guess, I have to go"  
"and I'll just stay here" Owen nodded "Good bye, Cristina Yang". This was the way they parted. Heartfelt words, no grand gestures, this was the way it was meant to happen. They were to two people who had been destined to meet, but not to last. They both knew it as Cristina walked down the hall to the locker room.

* * *

The next morning came quickly. It was time to leave Seattle for the board exams. "Glowing smoking hot! Look like I'm married to the hottest general surgeon on this planet!" Derek smiled when he saw his wife in a nice blazer and skirt.  
"You like the outfit?" Meredith wondered. "You know I hate wearing stuff like this"  
"You'll blow them away." Derek kissed her.  
"I'll miss you" Meredith kissed him and moved on to her two kids "-and you -and you"  
"I'll update you on Zola's temperature" he promised.

In the meantime, George was saying goodbye to Sofia "Good luck baby" he kissed her.  
"I'm glad she's better" he told Callie.  
"Preach to the choir!" Callie laughed "You'll do great! You don't get sick!"

April was looking at her watch and running up and down next to the bus that was supposed to take them to the airport. "Nervous?" Jackson wondered.  
"You should be. We should be gone by now." April said and looked at her clock.  
"The flight's not for three hours. You're fine." Arizona assured her.  
"I-I'd be fine if people showed up on time." April threw a fit.  
"No one is going to be late. San Francisco is a short flight away. There's no reason to be nervous, okay?" Arizona told her "One long breath in, short breath out."  
"I'm sorry. It's just that my parents called me this morning to wish me luck, and they told me that their church is praying for me, and what-what-what if I don't pass? One in five people don't pass." She stuttered.  
"Why are you even thinking about that?" Jackson wondered "It's a test in proficiency, not cutting edge."

* * *

"Are you alright?" Amy wondered when she leaned over Owen. He was still thinking about his farewell with Cristina. Their relationship had been a constant reminder of not-supposed-to-be's. He nodded and they kissed.  
"I could stay like this forever" Owen said when Amelia opened his eyes.  
"I guess we'll have to get up some time. There's nothing in the fridge." Amelia giggled. "We could order pizza."  
Owen kissed her and got up "Or I go and pick up a few groceries and I make fettuccini al salmone"  
"Fancy" Amelia giggled "or you come back here"  
"I'm trying to sway you…" Owen said "lure you in… You won't leave me once you tasted this dish, you won't leave me to help those co-joined twins"  
"I'll be back soon" Amelia smiled. "We'll be back from Boise in no time"

* * *

When they arrived at the hotel, Meredith was chalky, she grabbed Cristina's arm and looked at her "Cristina."  
"What?" Cristina looked at her friend with a hint of irritation.  
"Zola has the stomach flu." Meredith stated and bit her lips in an attempt to stop herself from vomiting.  
"So? Kids get sick. Derek's with her." Cristina stated.  
"Zola has the stomach flu." Meredith repeated and vomited into one of the plants they were standing next to.  
"Oh, no. No, Mer, you can't be sick. cannot be sick. Okay. You're just freaking out. Okay. J-just take deep breaths, okay? Just take deep breaths." She told her.  
"So do you guys wanna go register and then go get some lunch? Oh. Wh uh, what just happened?" April came by.  
"Stomach flu." Cristina told her.  
"Zola has the stomach flu and you didn't say anything?" April looked at Meredith "How could you? Are are you trying to sabotage us all?"  
"It's not like it's the black plague." George insisted.  
" You are supposed to be our friend." April told her.  
"Oh, April, calm down." Cristina rolled her eyes.  
"Oh Y-you stay right where you are, typhoid Mary." April mumbled.  
"Come on." Meredith rolled her eyes.  
"Let's go register. Mer, just sit. And I'll get your registration package." Cristina smiled and they left Meredith where she was.

* * *

Lexie walked into Zola's room with a tray full of breakfast food "How are you little princess?" she smiled.  
"Good, auntie Lexie." Zola smiled.  
"We are going to have lots of fun while Mark will take your Christopher and Maria to the birthday party the mother of Cynthia is throwing for her." Lexie smiled "Daddy said you are too sick to go. But we could read Dr. Seuss. Would you like to do that with me?"  
"Yeah, best auntie." Zola smiled. "I want pancakes"  
"I'll get the books for you." Lexie smiled "You may not leave the bed today unless you have to go to the toilet. Let's start"  
Lexie opened the book and started to read " _the sun did not shine.  
it was too wet to play.  
so we sat in the house  
all that cold, cold, wet day._

 _i sat there with sally.  
we sat there, we two.  
and i said, 'how i wish  
we had something to do!'_

 _too wet to go out  
and too cold to play ball.  
so we sat in the house.  
we did nothing at all_."

Suddenly Lexie's phone rang. "Dr. Sanders? What's the matter?"  
"I just wanted to let you know that you've been selected to become Chief resident"  
"That's amazing" Lexie smiled and hugged Zola.  
"What's the matter, aunt Lexie?" the girl wondered.  
"I'm Chief resident" Lexie smiled "I'll be the fifth-year resident that rules over all the other residents"  
"Can we have ice-cream to celebrate?" Zola wondered.  
"No, Zozo, you are too sick for ice-cream"

* * *

"How is she?" Alex wondered when he walked into Cristina's room.  
"Still sick." Cristina said.  
"I have a banana bag. I'll be fine tomorrow." Meredith yelled from the other room  
"Sofia is having the flu as well." George said "We've been up all night for the last couple of nights"  
"Zola has been throwing up on me all night. That's why Lexie is with her. Have I told you that I'm going to miss this?"  
"Miss what?" Alex wondered "The throwing up bit?"  
"You, me just talking – in between surgeries." Meredith sighed.  
"You'll forget about me." Alex sighed.  
"I couldn't. You saved me." Meredith remembered.  
"That's a long time ago." Cristina said "You'll remember me when I won a Harper Avery award"  
"Promise me you'll take care of yourself, will you, Alex?" Meredith asked.  
"What makes you think that I'll fall apart without you?" Alex wondered.  
"You were insufferable when we met." Cristina laughed.  
"Possibly one of the worst human beings ever." Meredith giggled.

* * *

The next morning started with the first official session of their oral board "Welcome to the American Medical Board of Surgery Certifying Examination. We'll give you four separate scenarios in 3 30-minute sessions, To pass the test, you must pass two of the three sessions. - Now you can fail a session and still pass. But examiners are not permitted to indicate whether you passed or failed each session. You'll be rated on your ability to diagnose, manage treatment, handle the unexpected" one of the examiners explained "Basically, the strength of your constitution in crisis. And when we move on to the, uh, next scenario, th-there's no doubling back, meaning, once a question is asked You can't go back".  
"Understood, sir." Cristina nodded.  
"Are you in a hurry, Dr Yang?" A second examiner wondered.  
"No, sir." Cristina smiled politely "Just ready when you are."  
"Mm-hmm. So then, a 65-year-old woman is being seen by her primary care physician for a workup of osteoporosis when she is found to have elevated calcium." He started to describe the scenario "Her P.T.H. level was well above normal. Her doctor sends her to you."  
"Elevated calcium and P.T.H. would indicate primary hyperparathyroidism. I would offer the patient a para thyroidectomy. And first I would explore the right side. If that gland is large I would biopsy it. Um, after doing the biopsy, I would Hang-hang on. What-what did the pathologist report say?" Cristina looked at her examiner.  
"Path comes back with parathyroid hyperplasia."  
"Uh Um, and how large was the gland?" she continued. Everything went well.

* * *

During the birthday party Maria came to Mark and Derek with tears in her eyes. When Mark asked her why she was crying she stated that Zola hated her "Zola likes you Maria." Mark assured her.  
"But she's leaving." The girl stated and hugged her daddy.  
"Because her mommy and her daddy have a job in Boston- just like your mom is working in California and your daddy in Seattle." Derek tried to explain. Mark put her down on the bench between both of them  
"and mommy and I love you a lot – that doesn't change when you are with the other person." Mark tried to cheer her up.  
"Why are you leaving?" Maria looked at Derek.  
"There are so many people to save on the other side of the country – the doctors are over there need help." He smiled.  
"Is auntie Lexie saving people?" Maria wondered.  
"Yes." Derek nodded.  
"Is daddy saving her? She screams a lot in the bed room." Maria said. "She probably feels pain"  
Derek had to suppress her laugh "Yeah, he's helping her in a way only he can." He bid his lips while he looked at Mark.

* * *

After one of the examiners had almost stopped the exam session, Meredith needed some positive reassurance. "Meredith?" Derek heard a wimp on the other side of the line.  
"Uh, I lied to you." She cried.  
"About what?" Derek asked surprised.  
"I'm not okay. I might be dying. I think our daughter tried to kill me with her flu for being a bad mother." Meredith admitted  
"Why didn't you tell me before?" he wondered.  
"I'm failing, Derek, and I and I-I don't think I can go back in there. I just can't, I mean" she admitted "Will you still love me if I fail? You want me to yell at you or tell you to come home? I want you to tell me what to do."  
"The test is a mirror." He said calmly. She wanted to punch him because what he said didn't make any sense.  
"What are you talking about?" she wondered.  
"The test it's a mirror." Again. The urge to punch him grew stronger.  
"Reflecting my sickly incompetence?" she cried-laughed. "Are you saying I won't like myself if I give up right now, that I won't be able to look myself in the mirror if I quit?"  
"Whatever you decide, I will still love you." He smiled.  
"No, you won't. Nobody loves a quitter." Meredith mumbled.  
"Good luck, Meredith." He said and hung up.

* * *

Meredith and Cristina sat on the floor of the wash room. Cristina had locked the entrance door to make sure that nobody would disturb Meredith while she was throwing up.  
"Are all your questions gross?" Meredith looked up from the toilet bowl.  
"Gross? What do you mean, gross?" Cristina wondered.  
"Uh, they keep asking me about bowels and bloody stools?" Meredith explained.  
"It's general surgery. What do you expect?" Cristina laughed.  
"You're not helping, at all and it's not all general. They asked me about brain swellings too." Meredith nodded  
"My guy is a freakin' fossil. The last time he was in the O.R., it was lit by candles." Cristina joked.  
"Maybe I'll just live in here, in this stall, in my filth till I die." Meredith mumbled and puked again "I hate that kid"  
There was a knock on the door. April was trying to get in"  
"Sick woman in here. Go away." Cristina yelled  
"Uh, I-I really need to get in there." April begged.  
"Uh, sorry." Cristina declined.

Jackson looked at April. He was in the men's room and he was looking at April. "Jackson" April's breath stopped.  
"Are you okay?" Jackson wondered.  
"Do I look okay?" April wondered.  
"You seem distracted." Jackson observed "But we are in the middle of our boards, I guess that's natural"  
"I started a bar fight last night" April sighed nervously "You and that girl ticked me off"  
"I am, I'm still thinking about you and me and Lexie and me. And…I can't talk to you. I lost my fiancé and my best friend that day." Jackson said  
"Don't let one day ruin the rest of your life. I have to go."  
"Can you stay?" Jackson wondered.  
"Why?" April wondered "So you can tell me what a horrible person I am. I'm not"  
"Because I need someone." Jackson finally admitted.  
"You told me to stop talking to you. So, that's what I'll do. Someday you'll realize how much you messed up. You will remember all the times I stood by you even when things were falling apart. I was there for you all this time. I listened to you ranting about Lexie and all this time you treated me like I was replaceable. You took me for granted and I can't… I wanted you to want me as badly as I wanted you. All you did was treat me like I didn't matter because you assumed I'd always be around. I'm not. I'm gone." April said and stormed off, but Jackson reached her in time.  
"You don't get it, do you? Do you know how it feels if you had huge feelings? Yyou can't be expected just to turn those feelings off like some robot." Jackson let go off her arm and walked away.

* * *

"You have a 40-year-old man who complains of rectal pain and burning with defecation and occasionally some blood in the bowel movement."  
"I would do a rigid sigmoidoscopy to make sure there were no lesions in the rectum." Meredith said and grabbed the bin again. She hated that all her exam sessions were scheduled whenever she felt sick.  
"Squeamish, Dr. Grey?" one of the examiners wondered.  
"No, not at all." She looked up from the bin.  
"Good, then let's pick up the answers, shall we?" he pushed.  
"Of course, If there were lesions in the rectum, I would do an incisional biopsy and begin to fulgurate I would cover the bowel with omentum and close the fascia primarily." She explained.  
"The sutures tear right through the fascia." Another examiner answered.  
"In that case, I would use through the full thickness of the abdominal wall." Meredith smiled and puked again.

* * *

The group sat in front of the hotel. Five years of residency were over. "That was hell. Actual physical hell." April mumbled.  
"I think I went a tad overboard." Cristina nodded "A lot overboard."  
"They took something from me." Meredith nodded, but she was still a little nauseous and craved a milkshake after throwing up throughout her third exam session.  
"Yeah, that wasn't an exam. That was an interrogation." George nodded.  
"Like, way way overboard." Cristina was still living through her exam sessions that had sprung out of control when she had verbally attacked an examiner.  
"The mind games. - Trick questions."April nodded. "It felt like Al Qaeda in there."  
"Next test is June." Meredith sighed.  
"June's not bad." Cristina looked at Meredith.  
"June next year" Meredith sighed.  
"Oh. What's done is done. Let's just not even talk about it anymore" Jackson sighed.  
"Where's Alex?" April wondered and suddenly everyone was looking around.  
"I'll go and check on him" Meredith said and got up.

Meredith went to the reception "Has Alex Karev checked out yet? Seattle Grace Mercy West"  
"I'll check" the woman at the desk told her. "I'm afraid he hasn't. We tried to reach him"  
"Thanks" Meredith said and walked to the elevator. She hoped that she hadn't passed on her flu to him while she went up to his room and knocked. "Alex if you are still in there, you better hurry, the bus is ready to leave."  
"Hold on" Meredith heard a voice. Two minutes later a young woman left the room followed by Alex who was carrying his suitcase. Meredith rolled her eyes "Kepner noticed you've been missing"  
"Oh, that's flattering!" Alex rolled his eyes "I would have made it to the airport in time, you know"  
"Sure" Meredith smiled "I hope it was worth it, manwhore"  
"Nurse" Alex chuckled.  
"Did you just call me nurse?"  
"If the white cap fits" Alex winked and hugged Meredith. "You could have waited five minutes longer"  
"Or I could have left you here" Meredith teased him.

* * *

"So, that's it." Cristina stood at her gate. She'd leave immediately. There was nothing left for her in Seattle.  
"I guess." Meredith nodded. They both looked at each other and didn't know what to do.  
"You know we don't have to do the thing where you say something and then I say something, and then somebody cries and there's a moment." Cristina said.  
"Yuck!" Meredith noticed the tears in her eyes.  
"I'll talk to you once I arrived in Minnesota and we'll talk every morning, text me." Cristina said.  
"You hate texting." Meredith hugged Cristina and a tear ran down her face.  
"I'll text you anyway." Cristina smiled "I have to go. But I can't."  
"What do you need Cristina?" Meredith's eyes were teary "An I love you? I love you."  
"No, I can't do this." Cristina looked at Meredith.  
"Do you need me to kick your ass?" Meredith tried to give her the pep talk she would have needed when she had gone to Boston "Get on that plane, he's not coming, he's married. You both need this."  
"Meredith, you'll always be my person." Cristina smiled and grabbed her bag when she noticed that Meredith was doing something on her phone "What are you doing?"  
"I'm looking for a song. I know how we finish. We dance it out." Meredith smiled.  
"We are at an airport." Cristina pointed out.  
Meredith grabbed her arms and pulled Cristina closer "So what?" and they both started dancing.

* * *

One flight and a never-ending bus ride later, Meredith was finally back at Seattle Grace Mercy West. "Have you checked the results yet?" Derek wondered when he met his wife in the ER bay where they bus had dropped them off.  
"Coming up in 2 minutes, but I'm too nervous. You can do it for me" Meredith handed her phone to Derek "The code is 4520"  
"It's loading and it's up. But I think they made a mistake." he read the line over and over again.  
"I failed?" Meredith looked at him in shock.  
"No, you have scored full marks. It says you specialised in neuro." Derek looked at her "Haven't they updated your file?"  
"That's because I did specialise in neuro. Don't be mad! Amelia signed off on my surgeries." Meredith bit her lip  
"And I didn't even notice." Derek went through her account "You clocked more hours in neuro than you did in general."  
"Are you mad?" Meredith had always imagined that he'd throw a huge fit, but for some reason he seemed calm.  
"No, I'm married to the hottest neuro surgeon on the planet." He smirked and pulled her closer. "You have to tell me how you did it though. I want to hear everything"  
Meredith got nauseous again and pushed him away. "I'm getting sick. Sorry!"  
"Are you okay?" he followed her to the toilet. He heard that she was puking and felt rather out of place in the ladies' room.  
"Yeah, probably just the excitement." She mumbled to herself.

* * *

"Your mama is pretty amazing, Sofia!" Arizona smiled and looked at the frying pan.

"She really is. Just look at the pancakes she just made. They are shaped like little hearts. Because I love you so much." Callie kissed Arizona while she walked through the kitchen.

"Yummy" Sofia giggled.

"It's crazy that all of our friends are leaving." Arizona sighed.

"George and Alex are staying." Callie said "Your golden boy is staying"

"Yeah, but Meredith, Cristina are leaving and Shepherd. Sofia is going to miss Christopher and Zola." Arizona said.

"Amy and Owen are staying, thought. Don't you ever dream of just packing everything and just leaving everything behind?" Callie wondered.

"No, because that's what I did my entire childhood" Arizona reminded Callie "I'm not going anywhere without the two of you. I love my life as it is. I love you! I love all we have!"

"We should throw them a party!" Callie suggested. "They'll be back in four hours, there's plenty of time"

"What are you saying Sofia?" Arizona asked her daughter.

"Partay!" Sofia giggled. "Daddy is a superhero now -like mommy!"

* * *

Alex and Meredith walked up to the house. It had been a long journey and Alex was looking forward to a cold beer. He had helped Meredith to collect the kids from day-care. "Arizona, what are you doing here?" Alex wondered when the door opened from inside before he got a chance to unlock the door.

"Throwing you a party. You passed your boards! You deserve a party." Arizona hugged him.

"All of you do!" Callie smiled and handed over a beer to each one of them.

"What are you doing to mom's house? You are so losing your deposit, Lexie." Meredith whispered into Lexie's ear when she hugged her.

"This isn't my party!" Lexie smiled "It wasn't even my idea"

"I let them in!" Derek kissed her "I wanted to celebrate the hottest neurosurgeon in the city"  
"It bothers you to lose out to me and Amelia, doesn't it?" Meredith teased him.

"Cheers to whoever bought the booze. We are free! No more stupid attendings telling you what to do" April stood on the sofa and danced.

"She's compensating." Jackson rolled his eyes.

"Totally." Meredith nodded. For a second she looked around and saw all the people around her. She was taken back to the time Izzie had invited the entire hospital staff to a party during their intern year.

* * *

The noise of the party was slowly dying down. "That was a great party" Derek complimented Arizona while they were cleaning up in the kitchen.  
"Thanks." Arizona smiled and looked at the leftovers on the kitchen counter.  
"It was a good party" Derek sighed "It's like the perfect moment. Everyone is happy. My sister is married, Mark is married, Meredith is happy, George is happy, we'll be moving to Boston"  
"It has been a good day." Arizona nodded.  
"and it's time to move on." Derek looked at the picture of them at the fridge. It had been taken shortly before Lexie had moved in.  
"Are you sure about that?" Arizona wondered "Wow, you looked young in this picture"  
"It's about time. I still can't believe Amy got married and wouldn't tell me." Derek shook his head.  
"She's an adult." Arizona said  
"I guess that's something I have to get used to." Derek nodded "I wonder how Zola …"  
"My brother used to be very protective off me." Arizona interrupted him "We moved schools a lot"  
"I guess this isn't my job anymore -even though I always liked that." Derek nodded.

* * *

"Zo, what's the matter? You look sad" Meredith wondered when she came into Zola's room to kiss her good night.  
"Mommy. Need hug." Zola begged.  
"Yeah sweetie, what's the matter?" Meredith sat down on her bed side "You can tell me"  
"Liam said you are not real mommy, don't love me. I black you not." The girl admitted.  
"Zola, I didn't give birth to you. Normal moms give birth to you, your biological mommy, the one that gave birth to you died." Meredith began to explain.  
"So, you are not my mommy?" Zola looked at her.  
"I am." Meredith hugged her.  
"But you didn't give birth to me."  
"I didn't. But I chose to become your mother because I didn't want you to grow up without one. Can you tell me what mom's do?" Meredith asked her daughter.  
"They take care of kids and make them food and love them." Zola smiled.  
"Do I take care of you?" Meredith smiled.  
"Yes." Zola smiled.  
"Do I love you?" Meredith tickled her.  
"Yes." Zola giggled.  
"See, I would do anything for you honey, I'm your mother. You were adopted because I didn't give birth to you, but the moment I saw you I knew that I was meant to be your mother. Do you know the story of how we met you?" Meredith looked at Zola.  
"No, tell it." The girl insisted.  
"You came to the hospital mommy and daddy work in because auntie Arizona went to Africa, but she was very sad and lonely in Africa without Auntie Callie so she came back before she could fix your spine. You had a very bad spine and daddy fixed it after uncle Alex managed to bring you and a lot of other kids over to Seattle and mommy met you right after you arrived here. I was supposed to examine you, but your smile was so infectious, I just knew that I was supposed to take care of you."  
"You loves me." Zola smiled.  
"We love you, sweetie. You are our little girl." Meredith kissed her forehead and turned on Zola's night light "But you have to sleep now."  
"Good night, I love you" Zola nodded.  
"I love you, too. Sweet dreams!" Meredith waved her goodbye.

"Where are you going?" Derek wondered when he saw his wife with make-up and a nice dress. He had prepared a nice red wine for them.  
"We are having one final get together at joes." Meredith smiled. "This is goodbye and I'd like to see everyone before we leave"  
"Oh, I was hoping we could spend some time together. It's our last night in the house." Derek looked at her "You look beautiful."  
"I'm sorry. You aren't mad about the whole neuro thing?" Meredith looked at him again.  
"No, I'm proud and amazed by how you pulled this off. I wouldn't have pegged you to be Amy's annoyingly amazing resident." Derek laughed "I was always jealous when she talked about you."  
Mer: "Who did you think it was?" Meredith wondered.  
"Hillman, maybe Kepner."  
"Kepner?" Meredith laughed.  
"She had a crush on me once."  
"I recall." Meredith nodded "I have to keep going."

* * *

"So, this is it" Meredith looked at the beer in front of her and the people around her.  
"Last beer together in Seattle." Alex nodded "I'll miss you Grey"  
"We probably won't ever get together like this" George nodded.  
"I'll take over Cristina's part and tell you 'Don't get sappy now. It's a reason to celebrate. We are leaving and we get to save many lives.'" Meredith giggled.  
"I'm staying." George told them "I decided this morning"  
"We are leaving and I can't believe I'm going back to Boston." Meredith laughed.  
"I can't believe my grandpa and my mom hired you. I'll miss you." Jackson admitted.  
"I'll miss this place. And you people in it." April nodded  
"I won't miss you Kepner." Alex laughed.  
"Alex! Be nice! It's our last night together!" Meredith looked at him "Here's to us! Here's to all the times we screwed up!"  
"To new OR's and new lives to save! To new beginnings!" Jackson nodded.  
"To friends and people who became family! The last few days might have kicked my ass, fill the glass Mer!" Alex told her.  
"To us!" April nodded and looked at Jackson. "I'll go. I have a suitcase to pack. I'll see you around."

* * *

"You're fine, like family, I mean we've been in each other's life for longer than anybody... no matter if Lex and you got married." Meredith looked at Jackson who had been too drunk to be left on his own after their night out. "Derek won't mind if you are staying the night"

"Royally inbred." He cheered and Meredith noticed that the baby monitor indicated that Christopher had woken up. She went into his room and carried him into the living room where Jackson was looking at the packed boxes. "Yeah. And this young fellow won't know what hit him when he starts his residency. " she smiled. "But he's good at keeping everyone awake, so he might be a good Nazi"

"He probably knows how to do an appendectomy by 4th grade" Jackson giggled.

"… and he'll perform craniotomies before high school." Meredith joked.

"I love April. She's the reason… " Jackson sighed as he looked at one of the pictures of Meredith and Derek that were still in the house.

"You love her. But you're not with her." Meredith looked at him "Is there a reason?"

"I… " he started, but paused because he had to think of one.

"she' was your best friend, you have a lot to lose I get it. You don't want to ruin anything, but you push her so far, there's nothing left." Meredith explained "I've been there."

"He doesn't know how lucky he is, he doesn't worry about girls or tomorrow" Jackson kept looking at Christopher "I want that"  
"Why did you do it?" Meredith wondered "All you would have had to do was say yes to my sister"  
"when I stood there everything became quite unreal and it seemed as though noting could have any consequences." He smiled and felt that feeling again "Did you ever feel like this with Derek?"  
"Every day." Meredith smiled and kissed her son. Suddenly Meredith had an epiphany and she grabbed the keys "I have to drive down to the petrol station."

* * *

"Dr. Karev, there's an ambulance coming in ten." One of the interns told him. He looked around and saw a bunch of residents and interns waiting for orders "Alright, Hillman, Packer, Wilson, come with me. We'll wait for the ambulance in the bay"  
The doors opened and a young paramedic told him "Male, 57 with a history of congestive heart failure. Upon arrival, he had a respiratory rate of 36 and was profoundly laboured. He has cyanosis around his lips. No signs of trauma. On the way, he got unconscious and we placed an oropharyngeal airway. No vomiting." He knew the voice and the hair and when we looked up he saw his sister Amber. "Alex, don't look at me like that. It's my first day of training." Amber smiled.  
"Is there anything else you need to know, Dr. Karev?" the other paramedic wondered.  
"No, no, that was fine. I'm off at 8 Amber, call me."  
"I told you I'm fine Alex." Amber reassured him "This is going to be part-time"  
"Girlfriend?" Jo wondered.  
"No, sister." Alex insisted. "If I wanted to take out anyone to dinner, it'd be you."  
"No thanks!" Jo declined "I know what you did with my friends"  
"Two consenting adults!" Alex said "Get him into trauma 2 and …page Hunt"

* * *

"Hey, congratulations!" George heard someone behind him. He thought he was dreaming for a second, but there she was. "Hey George!" she smiled.  
"Anna? What are you doing here?" George wondered.  
"I took a few days off work… I figured- I should come by." She seemed nervous "I've been thinking about you. A lot in fact."  
"I haven't been thinking about you." He lied.  
"I've been an ass, but I had to be an ass because I had to look after myself. I shouldn't have left like this, but after mom died, things came crashing down on me and I had to focus on myself." Anna started to apologize "I get it. I just wanted to tell you that you can be proud of the doctor you became, Dr. Webber talked about you a lot and Callie did. He believed in you -and I do and she does. And you don't want to talk to me."  
George threw his paper gown in the bin and left the ER.  
"Goodbye, George." Anna whispered.  
"Anna, I'm flying to Boise in 30 minutes it's a big surgery. I'll be back in two days." George explained "We can talk when I'm back"  
"I'll wait in the parking lot." Anna nodded.  
"Anna wait, I can't do this. I want you, I love you and I want to be with you. You have a choice, it's simple: Living together or splitting up. I can't deal with this long-distance thing any longer." George rambled.  
Anna pulled him closer to her "It's you!"

* * *

It was time to fly to Boise which meant that it was time to say goodbye to all of her dearest. "I'll miss you, Alex" Meredith hugged him. "Don't revolve into an asshole"  
"Whatever" he smiled "I guess I won't see you around. I'll miss you, Grey."  
"Yeah, I guess we're leaving" Meredith nodded.  
"Goodbye, Alex" Derek nodded.  
"Meredith, come and give me a hug, you're the best mentee I ever had." Amelia hugged her.  
"I'm the only mentee you ever had" Meredith laughed "Take care of this place, you are the only Shepherd here now."  
"I'm a Hunt now. And you take care of my brother" Amelia said "Don't let his God complex grow too much"  
"Bye Amy" Derek hugged her. "I'll see you around. You could come over for thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm sure mom would appreciate this."  
"I haven't told her about the wedding yet" Amelia said. "I should do this before I visit"  
"She'll like Owen"

"Oh, I'll miss all of you so much" Mark told them and pulled both Meredith and Derek close to him.  
"I'll call you once we are back" Lexie whispered into Meredith's ear. "I love you. You've been a good sister."  
"I hope you'll take care of Mark, don't boost his ego too much" Derek whispered into Lexie's ear.  
"Goodbye George, seems like we survived this after all" Meredith sighed.  
"Oh, my daughter called me a superhero the other night" he smiled "I'm a superhero – we're all superheros"  
"April, I'm sure he'll come around" Meredith told her. April was still waiting for Jackson to come around "I'm sure it'll work out"  
"Bye, Mer." April nodded. "Bye, Dr. Shepherd". Meredith and Derek stayed behind when the bus left. That was it. Good bye.

* * *

Meredith stayed in the bay and watched the bus leave. It wouldn't be long until they'd arrive at the airport. This hospital had been where everything had happened. "They left five minutes ago, she'll be back tomorrow." Meredith smiled and looked at Jackson who was still in scrubs.  
"Yeah, so I heard you are leaving today. I guess you are missing the place already." Jackson smirked.  
"I guess I am." Meredith nodded, Boise would have been an awesome experience for her "We have to get going."  
"Call me if you are in Boston." Jackson insisted. "I guess, my mom is going to tell me before you do, but, I'd like to hear."  
"Sure." Meredith nodded and observed that Jackson was checking his phone.  
"Do you know when they will arrive?" he wondered. "I'll be in surgery again in thirty minutes"  
"Don't act like this is the last chance you ever get to talk to her! What's…. What were you going to tell her anyway?" Meredith observed an expression on his face that wasn't foreign to her "Oh my God… last night… She was a virgin."  
"I know that." Jackson nodded.  
"You defiled a virgin." Meredith uttered in disbelief and hit his head.  
"Stop hitting my head." Jackson insisted  
"I swear… I will go full crazy on you. All right?" Meredith said.  
"I am a grown ass man. She's a grown woman." Jackson reminded her.  
"Yeah, but she's…"  
"She's what, April Kepner?" Jackson looked at Meredith "Believe me, she is grown. I didn't manipulate her. I didn't defile her or trick her. I didn't take her virginity. She gave it to me. All right? This isn't about something I did to her. This is something we did together, and she can't handle that. So, she is praying to Justin Timberlake, apparently. And I'm pissed. And it's a mess. So just stop hitting my head."

"So, Alex is a diseased man-whore again and April Kepner is no longer a virgin. Wow." Meredith smirked "I walked into him and one of the interns in a supply closet today. So, tell me what you were going to tell her!"  
"That I love her. That I don't ever want to live without her, that she changed my life." Jackson smiled.

* * *

Meredith and Derek were taking one last ferryboat ride with the kids. It was a perfect day. Classic Seattle weather and no cloud in the sky. Meredith looked at the skyline. It was a view she wouldn't see for a very long time "I found a buyer" Derek said softly waking Meredith out from her little daydream.  
"Already?" Meredith looked at Derek in surprise.  
"Mark always liked the things I do" Derek smirked "I found a beautiful three bed room in the middle of the city and Mark and Lexie are going to buy our house."  
"Well, you should keep looking." Meredith looked at Derek and smiled when their eyes met.  
"You can't be too picky, Meredith." He insisted and completely missed the point.  
"I'm not being picky, Derek. All I'm saying is that a four-bed room might be a better choice" she had a huge smile on her face and her skin was glowing.  
"You are…" he looked at her. She nodded. He wondered how he could have missed the signs. "I'm pregnant." She nodded. "We are having another baby"  
Neither one said a word "You are not saying anything?" she wondered, but he kissed her and didn't let go off her. Their lips touched and the sunlight shone on their faces while the kids were playing in front of them.  
"This might be the most perfect ferryboat ride I ever had. I love you Meredith and we are going to do this a lot more often once we are in Boston. We are just going to take a day off- you me and the kids and we are going to ride the ferryboat all day if you want. I love you Meredith and our little family".

* * *

 _We're moving on. But just because we are leaving, and that hurts, there are some people who are such a part of us that they'll be with us no matter what. They are solid ground, our north star, our hiraeth. And the small clear voices in our hearts that will be with us, no matter what._

* * *

By the time, they had reached the harbour, Meredith's and Derek's phones rang both at once. Meredith looked at the caller ID. Owen. This was odd she thought to herself "The plane should have arrived hours ago, Amelia doesn't answer her phone" Meredith looked shooked. This was a plane five of her best friends were on. "I keep calling, but she doesn't answer and I can't get a hold of anyone."  
"Maybe they are in the hospital" Meredith tried to calm herself down "Maybe…"  
Derek interrupted her "Amelia collapsed on the way to the hospital. They just called me. Apparently, I'm still her emergency contact. She's in surgery and they need another neurosurgeon for the twins, I'll drop you and the kids off and Owen and I will fly to Boise"  
"Is Amelia okay?" Meredith wondered.  
"She was pregnant" Derek sighed "Tubal pregnancy -they are trying to do what they can"  
"Go, we'll be fine" Meredith nodded.

.

.

* * *

 _That's it. Story is over. Nobody died._ _I'm out.  
Let me know how you liked it! Feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss some aspects or leave a review! Both are appreciated! _

_Thanks for everything! You are what made writing this such a fun pastime!_


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